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Book-Reviews 


By 

Edmund  Lester  parson 


The  New  York 

Public   Library 

1917 


NOTE 

^J^HESE  papers  are  based  upon  four  lectures  given  to  an 
-*  audience  composed  of  the  librarians  of  small  libraries 
and  of  library  assistants.  They  were  part  of  a  series  of  lec- 
tures held  in  The  New  York  Public  Library,  under  direction 
of  the  Library  School.  Miss  Plummer,  the  late  Principal 
of  the  School,  wished  to  give  the  visiting  librarians  some 
discussion  of  the  literary  and  human  aspects  of  library 
work,  aside  from  its  routine.  Other  lecturers  spoke  about 
modern  poetry  and  fiction,  book-illustration,  and  the  drama. 
I  do  not  pretend  to  offer  much  that  will  be  new  to  those 
who  have  access  to  large  and  scholarly  libraries,  but  in  the 
material  collected  here,  there  may  be  something  to  interest 
almost  any  librarian.  —  E.  L.  P. 


*'  «" 


J J.*«;  •■ 


Reprinted  March    1917 

FROM   THE 

Bulletin  of  The  New  York  Public  Library 
OF  November  -  December  1916 


form  p-88  [111-14-17  6cl 


BOOK-REVIEWS 


IN  these  talks  we  shall  discuss  some  of  the  faults  and  merits  of  book-review- 
ing as  it  is  done  to-day,  and  as  it  interests  librarians.  Its  importance  to 
librarians  will  be  emphasized;  but  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  they  are 
interested  in  all  that  pertains  to  books  and  reading.  It  is  necessary  for  a 
librarian  to  read  book-reviews,  and  to  get  all  the  help  which  she  can  get  from 
them,  but  it  is  especially  undesirable  for  her  to  depend  too  much  upon  them. 
She  must  know  how  to  review  books  for  herself,  and  must  not  always  accept 
as  final  the  judgment  of  any  other  reviewer,  no  matter  in  what  publication 
he  writes. 

To  make  these  points,  I  shall  speak  to-day  of  the  present  condition  of 
book-reviewing  in  this  country.  At  the  next  lecture,  we  can  talk  about  the  his- 
tory of  book-reviewing  in  England  and  about  some  of  the  contemporary 
reviews.  After  that,  the  history  of  reviewing  in  the  United  States,  and  our 
present  book-reviewing  periodicals.  The  fourth  lecture  will  consider  the  dif- 
ferent classes  of  lx)ok-reviews,  the  processes  of  getting  a  book  reviewed,  and 
the  minor  subject  of  book  annotation. 


§2 

"There  are  five  groups  interested  in  literary  criticism:  publishers  of 
l30oks,  authors,  publishers  of  reviews,  critics,  and  finally,  the  reading  public." 
This  classification  was  made  by  an  essayist  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  half  a 
dozen  years  ago.  You  will  see  at  once  that  he  has  left  us  out  of  the  reckoning 
entirely,  —  he  pays  librarians  not  even  the  bare  compliment  of  mention.  All 
the  persons  in  these  five  groups,  by  the  way,  are  accustomed  to  leave  librarians 
out  of  their  reckoning,  —  all  but  the  publishers  of  books,  at  any  rate.  When 
a  writer,  or  a  critic,  is  speaking  of  literary  or  bookish  folk  he  never  mentions 
librarians.  This  is  a  strange  thing,  —  librarians  who  do  nothing  but  collect, 
preserve  and  distribute  books  are  thought  of  as  a  sort  of  class  apart  from 
all  others  who  deal  with  literature.  What  is  the  reason  for  this  ?  Are  libra- 
rians themselves  partly  to  blame?  Have  they  so  busied  themselves  with  the 
machinery  of  their  profession,   have  they  been  so  much  interested  in  the 

[3] 


4  '...••  TiH^-'^'^^W:  yORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

methods  of  collecting,  preserving  and  distributing  books  that  the  impression 
has  gone  abroad  that  they  have  no  time  to  open  the  covers,  and  finally,  no 
inclination  to  do  so,  even  if  they  had  time?  You  and  I  are  indignant  at  this 
charge;  we  know  that  we  read  books  and  love  them.  But,  we  must  admit 
that  the  mistaken  view  is  rather  widely  held,  and  that  few  writers  in  naming 
the  various  kinds  of  people  interested  in  books,  remember  to  include  librarians. 

To  be  quite  honest  we  must  also  remember  that  some  of  our  colleagues 
seem  wholly  concerned  with  getting  libraries  (i.  e.,  the  buildings)  constructed; 
with  buying,  cataloguing,  and  lending  books.  They  boast  that  they  have  no 
time  to  read  anything  but  the  "literature  of  the  profession."  The  Lord  for- 
give them  for  that  use  of  the  word  "literature" !  At  last,  they  come  to  look 
upon  any  kind  of  book,  except  a  code  of  library  rules,  as  too  trivial  for  a 
librarian  to  read.  I  am  sure  you  all  have  seen  librarians  caught  reading  a 
book,  and  looking  as  guilty  as  a  boy  stealing  apples. 

Nevertheless  we  must  correct  the  error  of  that  Atlantic  essayist  (he  was 
Charles  Miner  Thompson,  the  editor  of  The  Youth's  Companion),  we  must 
correct  his  error,  and  include  librarians  in  the  class  of  those  interested  in 
book-reviews,  as  well  as  in  books. 

He  said  "interested  in  literary  criticism."  "^he  subject  of  these  talks  is 
"book-reviews."  The  terms  are  sometimes  used  as  if  interchangeable,  so 
it  may  be  well  to  establish  the  distinction  at  the  outset. 

It  is  not  always  easy  to  draw  the  line  between  them,  —  indeed,  it  is 
certain  that  both  in  what  I  quote  and  in  what  I  have  to  say  myself,  the  terms 
"criticism"  and  "literary  criticism"  will  occasionally  enter.  Yet  every  one 
of  us  recognizes  the  difference  between  a  "reviewer  of  books"  and  a  "literary 
critic."  Probably  there  are  youths  or  maidens  so  ingenuous  and  callow  that 
as  soon  as  they  write  a  book-review  or  two  for  the  local  newspaper,  will  refer 
to  themselves  as  "literary  critics,"  —  just  as  the  member  of  a  board  of  alder- 
men might  fancy  himself  a  "statesman." 

Book-reviewing  is,  of  course,  a  humble  branch  of  literary  criticism.  It 
is  an  entirely  honorable  occupation  or  diversion,  but  it  does  not  confer  upon 

its  practitioner  the  dignity  of  the  acknowledged  critic.     The  literary  critic 

» 

is  presumably  a  man  of  learning.  He  weighs  the  written  products  of  the 
centuries,  and  is  seldom  concerned  with  the  books  of  the  week. 

The  reviewer,  on  the  other  hand,  need  not  be,  and  often  had  better  not 
be,  a  person  of  profound  scholarship.  He  must  have  a  good  education,  to 
be  sure;  he  must  be  well  read.  But,  supposing  that  he  can  write  at  all,  he 
can  pass  a  satisfactory  judgment  on  Barrie's  latest  comedy  without  quoting 
Aristotle's  "Poetics";  he  can  compose  a  sensible  paragraph  about  a  volume  of 


BOOK-REVIEWS  5 

verse  by  some  contemporary  poet  without  having  Boileau  at  his  fingers'  ends; 
and  he  can  deal  with  the  average  novel  of  to-day,  and  render  an  opinion  which 
will  serve  the  usual  intelligent  reader,  even  if  he  is  not  perfectly  familiar  with 
the  theories  of  their  art  held  by  Flaubert  and  his  disciple,  Maupassant.  There 
are  not  half  a  dozen  genuine  literary  critics  in  this  country  to-day;  some  per- 
sons would  probably  say  there  is  not  one.  But  perhaps  even  the  most  severe 
commentators  on  the  state  of  our  book-criticism  would  admit  that  there  are 
scores  of  persons  who  can  write  decent  reviews. 

To  sum  up.  then,  the  difference  between  book-reviewing  and  literary  criti- 
cism,—  here  it  is,  practically  in  the  words  of  Professor  Brander  Matthews: 
The  aim  of  book-reviewing  is  to  engage  in  discussion  of  our  contemporaries,  f 
It  is  a  department  of  journalism,  and  must  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
criticism,  which  is  a  department  of  literature. 


§3 

I  said  that  those  who  comment  upon  the  state  of  book-reviewing  in 
America  —  in  other  words,  those  who  review  the  reviewer  —  might  arg^e  that 
there  are  scores  of  persons  who  can  write  fairly  good  book-reviews.  But 
is  this  correct?    Are  they  even  so  lenient  as  this? 

It  happens  that  the  state  of  American  book-reviewing  has  been  under 
consideration  to  an  unusual  degree,  within  a  few  years.  Two  articles  by  Bliss 
Perry  (in  the  Yale  Review,  for  July  and  for  October,  1914),  started  the  dis- 
cussion. But  as  the  essay  by  Mr.  Thompson,  to  which  I  have  already  referred, 
antedates  Mr.  Perry's  articles  by  six  years,  let  me  quote  from  that,  first.  Mr. 
Thompson  finds  little  that  is  good.  All  five  of  the  groups  of  persons,  which 
he  cited,  are,  says  he,  discontented  with  the  present  condition  of  American 
criticism,  — 

"Publishers  of  books  complain  that  reviews  do  not  help  sales.  Publishers 
of  magazines  lament  that  readers  do  not  care  for  articles  on  literary  subjects. 
Publishers  of  newspapers  frankly  doubt  the  interest  of  book-notices.  The 
critic  confesses  that  his  occupation  is  ill-considered  and  ill-paid.  The  author 
wrath  fully  exclaims  —  but  what  he  exclaims  cannot  be  summarized,  so  various 
is  it.  Thus,  the  whole  commercial  interest  is  unsatisfied.  The  public,  on  the 
other  hand,  finds  book-reviews  of  little  service  and  reads  them,  if  at  all,  with 
indifference,  with  distrust,  or  with  exasperation.  That  part  of  the  public 
which  appreciates  criticism  as  an  art  maintains  an  eloquent  silence  and  reads 
French."  ^ 


*  From  "Honest  Literary  Criticism,"  by  Charles  Miner  Thompson,  Atlantic  Monthly,  August,  1908. 


6  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

And  now,  as  we  have  added  a  sixth  group  —  librarians  —  it  may  be  said 
that  they  also  complain  about  book-reviews.^  They  complain  for  the  same 
reason  as  Mr.  Thompson's  "reading  public,"  because  they  often  find  book- 
reviews  of  little  service,  and  they  complain  for  another  reason,  —  that  of 
timeliness.  In  other  words,  the  average  book-review  appears  weeks,  if  not 
months,  after  the  librarian  really  needs  it.  Since  this  is  a  practical  difficulty, 
rather  than  an  intellectual  one,  it  is  sometimes  disregarded. 

The  librarian  or  library  assistant,  with  a  score  of.  her  readers  demanding 
a  new  book,  may  be  in  doubt  as  to  whether  it  is  one  she  ought  to  buy.  Now 
is  the  time  for  a  book-review  whose  advice  she  may  follow.  Under  these 
circumstances  she  would  rather  have  the  opinion  of  some  reviewer  with  com- 
mon-sense, given  to  her  when  it  would  be  useful,  than  the  solemn  and  final 
judgment  of  the  greatest  living  authority  upon  that  subject  —  whatever  it  is 
—  delivered  like  a  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court,  anywhere  from  eighteen 
months  to  three  years  after  the  publication  of  the  book.    And  she  is  quite  right. 

So  we  will  add  librarians  to  the  list  of  those  interested  in  book-reviews, 
and  stipulate  promptness  as  a  quality  which  they  may  justly  demand  in  book- 
reviewing. 


What  do  the  critics  of  book-reviewing  say  is  the  matter?  Well,  here  is 
the  leading  indictment  from  the  most  eminent  and  most  recent  of  them.  I 
quote  directly  from  Mr.  Bliss  Perry's  article  "Literary  Criticism  in  American 
Periodicals"  (Yale  Review,  July,  1914): 

"We  all  agree  that  the  status  of  literary  criticism  in  America  is  unsatis- 
factory. Those  of  us  who  write  books  agree  that  it  is  only  now  and  then, 
and  by  lucky  accident,  that  our  books  are  competently  reviewed.  We  get 
praise  enough,  and  sometimes  blame  enough  —  or  nearly  enough  —  but  we 
do  not  often  get  real  criticism.  The  reader  and  would-be  buyer  of  books  has 
great  difficulty  in  discovering  what  new  books  are  worth  buying  or  reading. 
A  generation  ago  one  could  often  depend  upon  the  local  bookseller  for  this 
information,  but,  for  well-known  economic  reasons,  the  old  type  of  book- 
seller has  in  most  towns  been  driven  from  business,  and  the  young  lady  who 


^  Since  this  was  written,  I  have  seen,  for  the  first  time,  an  article  called  "The  Failure  of  Book 
Reviewing"  by  John  Cotton  Dana.  It  is  in  Mr.  Dana's  book,  "Libraries"  (1916),  but  it  was  originally 
printed  in  the  Springfield  Republican  in  1900.  It  is,  perhaps,  as  severe  an  arraignment  of  American  book- 
reviewing  as  any  librarian  has  written.  Everybody  interested  in  this  subject  should  read  it,  although  one 
of  the  periodicals  which  the  author  analyzes  has  now  stopped  publication,  and  another  has  radically 
changed.  Mr.  Dana  blames  the  literary  journals  for  not  giving  facts  as  to  the  quality  of  paper  used  in 
a  book,  as  to  binding,  type,  ink,  index,  margins,  and  page  illustrations.  The  criticism  itself,  he  says,  is 
"a  chorus  of  praise,"  and  of  the  four  periodicals  which  he  discusses,  all,  except  TJie  Nation,  "lack  the  courage 
of  condemnation."  The  exclusion  from  Mr.  Dana's  analysis  of  one  of  these  four  —  plainly  a  commercial 
publication  —  and  the  inclusion  of  The  Dial,  might  have  made  our  book-reviewing  look  a  little  less  hopeless. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  7 

arranges  her  hair  behind  the  book-counter  of  the  department  store  is  obviously 
puzzled  by  your  questions.  If  you  turn  to  the  newspapers  for  information 
about  the  twelve  or  thirteen  thousand  books  published  in  this  country  every 
year,  you  find,  it  is  true,  a  heroically  compiled  mass  of  book  notices,  —  many 
of  them  composed,  in  their  essential  features,  by  the  advertising  clerks  of 
the  publishers  who  are  trying  to  sell  the  books.  There  were  never  so  many 
Saturday  and  Sunday  literary  supplements  and  other  guides  to  the  book  buyer; 
but  there  was  never,  even  in  the  Eighteen-Thirties,  any  less  actual  criticism 
in  proportion  to  the  number  of  books  published.  Here  and  there,  there  is 
a  daily  or  weekly  journal  that  endeavors,  according  to  its  abilities,  to  uphold 
and  to  apply  critical  standards.  I  need  not  name  them,  for  they  are  rare 
enough  to  be  generally  known.  Technical  treatises,  it  is  true,  frequently  meet 
with  competent  criticism  in  technical  journals;  although  I  have  heard  the 
editor  of  a  scientific  paper  boast  that  he  had  dictated,  in  sixty  minutes,  reviews 
of  eleven  new  scientific  books,  not  one  of  which  he  had  taken  the  trouble  to 
read  beyond  the  preface  and  the  table  of  contents." 

That  last  sentence  is  an  illuminating  comment  upon  the  veneration  which 
librarians  sometimes  lavish  upon  "technical  journals,"  upon  "scientific"  and 
"expert"  opinion!  / 

In  October  of  the  same  year,  and  in  the  same  magazine,  Mr.  Perry  con- 
siders "The  American  Reviewer"  himself.  Who  is  this  reviewer,  he  asks? 
He  quotes  Mr.  Thompson:  "Commonly  in  the  newspapers,  and  frequently 
in  periodicals  of  some  literary  pretension,  the  writers  of  reviews  are  shiftless 
literary  hacks,  shallow,  sentimental  women,  or  crude  young  persons  full  of 
indiscriminate  enthusiasm  for  all  printed  matter." 

Thus  it  is  phrased,  bluntly  and  brusquely,  by  Mr.  Thompson.  We  can 
find  the  thing  said  ever  so  much  more  effectively  in  "Pendennis."  That  is 
always  the  way,  —  if  we  wish  facts,  we  go  to  a  book  of  facts,  but  if  we  wish 
truth,  we  have  to  consult  what  we  call  fiction. 

Pendennis,  you  will  remember,  in  his  London  experiences,  was  a  writer, 
journalist,  poet,  and  book-reviewer.    This  is  what  Thackeray  says  of  him: 

"The  courage  of  young  critics  is  prodigious;  they  clamber  up  to  the  judg- 
ment seat,  and,  with  scarce  a  hesitation,  give  their  opinion  upon  works  the  most 
intricate  or  profound.  Had  Macaulay's  History  or  Herschel's  Astronomy 
been  put  before  Pen  at  this  period,  he  would  have  looked  through  the  volumes, 
meditated  his  opinion  over  a  cigar,  and  signified  his  august  approval  of  either 
author,  as  if  the  critic  had  been  their  born  superior  and  indulgent  master  and 
patron.  By  the  help  of  the  Biographie  Universelle  or  the  British  Museum, 
he  would  be  able  to  take  a  rapid  resume  of  a  historical  period,  and  allude  to 


8  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

names,  dates,  and  facts,  in  such  a  masterly,  easy  way,  as  to  astonish  his  mamma 
at  home,  who  wondered  where  her  boy  could  have  acquired  such  a  prodigious 
store  of  reading,  and  himself,  too,  when  he  came  to  read  over  his  articles  two 
or  three  months  after  they  had  been  composed,  and  when  he  had  forgotten 
the  subject  and  the  books  which  he  had  consulted.  At  that  period  of  his  life 
Mr.  Pen  owns,  that  he  would  not  have  hesitated,  at  twenty-four  hours'  notice, 
to  pass  an  opinion  upon  the  greatest  scholars,  or  to  give  a  judgment  upon  the 
Encyclopaedia." 

What  Mr.  Thompson  has  said  of  reviewers,  says  Mr.  Perry,  is  true 
enough,  no  doubt,  and  yet  the  latter  believes  that  there  are  "hundreds  of 
reviewers  of  a  better  sort,  college-trained  young  men  and  young  women,  who 
have  some  notions  of  literary  standards,  plenty  of  professional  ambition,  a 
tolerable  skill  in  writing,  and  who  would  really  like  to  do  their  best." 


§5 

Why  don't  they  do  it,  you  ask  ?  Mr.  Perry  thinks  it  is  commercialism,  — 
the  control  of  the  advertising  department  over  the  literary  page  of  the  paper. 
The  young  reviewer  often  has  his  honest  say,  he  admits,  and  so  does  many 
an  older  reviewer.  And  not  all  publishers  and  advertisers  are  disingenuous. 
But  the  control  exists.  The  system  is  simple.  Copies  of  all  reviews  are  sent 
to  the  publisher:  if  these  reviews  tend  to  be  unfavorable,  the  publisher  will 
often  cut  down  or  threaten  to  cut  down  his  advertising;  and  then  the  counting- 
room  of  the  newspaper  wants  to  know  why  the  young  reviewer  cannot  take 
a  more  "reasonable"  attitude  of  mind.  That  is  all:  and  if  the  reviewer's  living 
is  dependent  upon  his  taking  a  "reasonable"  view,  he  often  surrenders.  Here 
is  an  instance,  cited  by  Mr.  Perry: 

"I  am  not,  of  course,  putting  a  theoretical  case.  Any  publisher's  office 
or  newspaper  office  has  its  own  stories  to  tell.  In  fact,  since  I  began  to  write 
these  pages,  I  have  stopped  to  listen  to  the  adventures  of  a  young  newspaper 
man,  a  recent  graduate  of  that  joyous  school  of  journalism,  the  Harvard 
Lampoon,  who  is  now  doing  the  literary  and  dramatic  criticism  for  an  even- 
ing paper  in  an  inland  city.  This  boy's  amazed  discovery  that  his  light-hearted 
notices  of  certain  very  light  fiction  brought  rebuking  response  from  the  pub- 
lishers, from  the  manager  of  the  local  bookstore,  and  from  the  counting-room, 
was  comic,  and  it  would  have  been  tragic  if  the  Lampoon  humorist  had  not 
demonstrated  in  other  ways  his  value  to  his  newspaper.  But  he  does  not  joke 
any  more  about  the  advertisers:  he  has  seen,  in  a  flash  of  illumination,  the 


BOOK-REVIEWS  9 

relation  between  the  far-away  publishers  and  the  weekly  pay-envelope  of  the 
cub  reviewer." 

Aside  from  commercialism  Mr.  Perry  declares  that,  compared  with  for- 
eign periodical  criticism,  American  book-reviewing  lacks  candor,  it  lacks  trained 
intelligence,  and  it  lacks  distinction.  It  is  often  ambitious,  —  he  cites  a  Holi- 
day Number  of  the  New  York  Times,  with  its  "Review  of  the  Hundred  Best 
Books  of  the  Year."  But  although  the  books  were  selected  and  described  by 
a  committee  from  the  department  of  English  of  Columbia  University,  the  per- 
formance "revealed  the  limitations  of  the  amateur." 


§6 

Let  us  discuss  these  two  charges  against  American  book-reviewing.  First, 
there  is  the  commercialism,  the  control  of  the  literary  page  by  the  business 
manager;  the  muzzle  placed  upon  a  free  expression  of  honest  opinion  by  the 
power  of  the  dollar.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  it  exists.  The  testimony 
of  men  who  ought  to  know  is  so  strong;  the  antecedent  probability  is  so  much 
in  its  favor,  that  it  cannot  wholly  be  denied. 

From  personal  experience  I  am  unable  to  relate  a  single  thrilling  encounter 
with  Mammon.  During  five  or  six  years  I  have  intermittently  written  reviews 
of  various  books  for  a  newspaper  which  devotes  to  reviewing  probably  more 
space  than  any  other  journal  in  the  country.  It  also  carries  a  large  amount 
of  book-advertising.  For  a  much  shorter  time  I  wrote  reviews  for  one  of 
the  periodicals.  Whether  the  editors  were  so  impressed  by  my  appearance  of 
honesty  that  they  thought  it  hopeless  to  tempt  me,  or  whether  they  are  not 
accustomed  to  try  to  tempt  anyone,  I  will  let  you  decide.  But  they  never  con- 
veyed to  me,  directly  or  indirectly,  that  I  should  praise  this  book,  or  "go 
easy"  on  that  book,  because  its  publisher  was  a  big  advertiser  with  them.  Nor 
was  one  line,  nor  one  word,  of  adverse  criticism,  condemnation  or  ridicule 
ever  deleted  or  altered  in  my  reviews  by  the  editorial  "blue-pencil,"  —  that 
mythical  implement  which  all  editors  are  supposed  to  keep  handy.  Perhaps 
my  experiences  were  lucky:  in  fact,  I  know  they  were. 

But  it  would  be  wrong  to  argue  from  this  instance  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  commercial  influence  on  book-reviewing.  In  certain  places  it  un- 
doubtedly exists,  —  the  testimony  of  experienced  and  widely-informed  men, 
is  almost  invariably  in  the  affirmative.  The  man  who  buys  space  in  news- 
papers and  magazines,  whether  to  advertise  books,  or  patent  medicines,  or  a 
department  store,  or  a  theatre,  or  a  railroad,  holds  a  weapon  over  the  heads 
of  the  publishers.    His  power  can  be  used  —  it  frequently  is  used  —  as  a  subtle 


10  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

and  effective  kind  of  bribery,  one  of  the  new  and  refined  forms  of  sin  which 
our  civilization  has  developed. 

So  this  evil  which  affects  us,  is  only  a  small  manifestation  of  a  very  large 
national  evil:  the  power  which  the  advertiser  holds  to  corrupt  the  press,  and 
through  the  press  to  mislead  public  opinion.  It  is  bad;  it  bothers  us  and 
troubles  us  to  find  that  there  are  book-reviewing  publications  which  can  be 
muzzled  or  bought.  But  as  we  are  citizens  first,  and  librarians  afterwards,  it 
is  absurd  to  lose  the  sense  of  proportion.  It  is  foolish  to  explode  with  wrath 
over  this  matter  and  not  to  save  any  indignation  for  the  larger  damages  which 
can  be  wrought.  It  would  be  ridiculous  to  think  merely  of  venal  book-reviews 
and  to  forget  the  children  who  are  drugged  and  the  wretched  invalids  who 
are  humbugged  because  many  publications  do  not  dare  tell  the  truth  about 
patent  medicines;  or  to  forget  the  railroads  and  corporations  which,  by  purchas- 
ing advertising  space  can  and  do  buy  editorial  opinion,  color  the  news,  and 
poison  at  its  source  the  information  upon  which  we  depend  to  govern  our  acts 
and  votes. 

There  are  two  or  three  other  considerations  about  this  matter  of  com- 
mercialized book-reviewing.  It  cannot  be  defended  for  an  instant,  and  yet 
it  —  or  something  —  has  come  over  the  spirit  of  book-reviewing  and  made 
it  kindlier  and  less  given  to  the  old-fashioned  slashing  attack.  In  the  old  days 
they  sought  to  kill  an  author  as  far  as  literary  reputation  went.  In  one 
instance,  —  that  of  John  Keats,  which  we  shall  consider  with  English  book- 
reviewing,  there  were  persons  who  believed  that  a  review  killed  him  in  body 
as  well  as  in  spirit. 

Thackeray  describes  an  incident  of  the  old-school  criticism,  in  the  novel 
previously  quoted: 

"The  person  of  all  most  cruelly  mauled  was  Pen  himself.  His  verses 
had  not  appeared  with  his  own  name  in  the  Spring  Annual,  but  under  an 
assumed  signature.  As  he  had  refused  to  review  the  book,  Shandon  had 
handed  it  over  to  Mr.  Bludyer,  with  directions  to  that  author  to  dispose  of  it. 
And  he  had  done  so  effectually.  Mr.  Bludyer,  who  was  a  man  of  very  con- 
siderable talent,  and  of  a  race  which,  I  believe,  is  quite  extinct  in  the  press 
of  our  time,  had  a  certain  notoriety  in  his  profession,  and  reputation  for 
savage  humour.  He  smashed  and  trampled  down  the  poor  spring  flowers 
with  no  more  mercy  than  a  bull  would  have  on  a  parterre;  and  having  cut  up 
the  volume  to  his  heart's  content,  went  and  sold  it  at  a  bookstall,  and  purchased 
a  pint  of  brandy  with  the  proceeds  of  the  volume." 

Some  of  the  persons  who  find  fault  with  reviewing  as  it  exists  today, 
seem  to  imply  that  the  all-important  thing  is  that  bad  books  should  be  blamed. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  1 1 

They  forget  that  it  is  equally  important  that  good  books  should  be  praised 
and  their  authors  encouraged. 

In  our  every-day  speech  we  have  almost  lost  the  primary  meaning  of 
the  word  "criticism."  We  seldom  think  of  it  in  its  real  sense,  —  a  "judgment." 
Almost  invariably  we  use  it  in  its  third  or  fourth  meaning:  "harsh  or  un- 
favorable judgment."  I  once  observed  a  certain  Freshman  class  in  a  college, 
whose  members  gave  a  curious  illustration  of  this  habit  of  thinking  that  there 
is  only  one  kind  of  criticism,  and  that  unfriendly.  They  were  given,  on  an 
examination  paper  in  English  composition,  an  extract  from  a  book,  and  told 
to  criticise  it,  to  comment  upon  the  use  of  words,  and  so  on.  Now,  the  pas- 
sage was  an  exquisite  example  of  Stevenson's  style,  —  from  the  description 
of  sleeping  outdoors,  in  "Travels  with  a  Donkey."  But  the  Freshmen  did 
not  know  that;  it  was  not  labelled  in  any  way.  So  they  seized  their  fountain- 
pens  as  if  they  were  harpoons,  and  proceeded  to  lay  about  them  with  a  heavy 
hand.  They  tore  that  beautiful  bit  of  English  to  shreds  and  tatters,  and 
accused  the  author  of  every  literary  atrocity  known  to  the  text-book.  They 
threw  the  fragments  upon  the  ground  —  figuratively  speaking  —  and  danced 
upon  them.  Then  they  sat  back  and  wondered  why  they  didn't  get  better  marks 
in  the  examination ! 

It  is  easy  to  smile  at  them,  but  are  not  all  of  us  more  or  less  like  them  ? 
Do  we  not  judge  too  much  by  external  evidence,  by  the  surroundings  rather 
than  the  thing  itself?'  You  will  remember  the  dramatic  critics  in  "Fanny's 
First  Play,"  who  stood  about  and  positively  refused  to  give  any  opinion  about 
the  play  until  they  knew  who  had  written  it.  It's  absurd,  they  said,  to  ask 
us  whether  it  is  a  good  play  or  not.  How  can  we  tell,  until  we  know  the 
dramatist's  name? 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  wonder  what  might  happen  to  some  of 
the  greatest  classics  of  literature  if  they  could  suddenly  appear  to  us  unattended 
by  their  reputations?  Suppose  that  the  mighty  name  of  Shakespeare  was 
totally  unknown,  that  the  world  had  never  seen  nor  heard  of  his  plays.  Then 
suppose  that  somebody  discovered  the  plays  and  published  them.  I  think 
I  can  see,  in  my  mind's  eye,  some  of  the  comments  they  would  provoke  in 
certain  cautious  publications.  How  the  "sensationalism"  of  the  last  act  of 
"Hamlet"  would  be  deplored!  Do  you  fancy  that  our  Library  Association's 
Book-List  would  approve  "Othello"? 


*  Since  writing  this  I  have  heard  a  man  say  to  a  newspaper  writer:  "I  didn't  think  much  of  those 
▼ersea  of  yours,  when  they  were  in  your  own  paper.  When  they  were  quoted  in  that  other  paper,  I  saw 
that  they  were  mighty  good." 


12  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 


There  is  still  another  matter  which  it  is  well  for  librarians  to  remember. 
When  we  demand  absolute  frankness  of  criticism  of  books  it  may  be  whole- 
some for  us  to  ask:  do  we  get  absolute  frankness  of  criticism  about  our  own 
work?  Or  do  we  get  comment  tempered  and  softened  by  the  desire  to  speak 
kindly  of  our  own  colleagues  and  associates  ?  So  long  as  the  latter  is  true,  is 
it  not  a  little  unreasonable  for  us  to  expect  a  stern  and  uncompromising  im- 
partiality from  writers  of  book-reviews,  and  from  editors,  toward  the  authors 
of  books  ?  For  they  —  reviewers  and  editors  —  are  often  upon  the  same  terms 
of  association,  acquaintance,  or  friendship  with  authors,  as  the  writers  in 
library  magazines  are  with  other  librarians.  Human  nature  has  its  way  in 
both  cases. 


§8 

Finally,  it  is  important  not  to  exaggerate  the  effect  of  an  unfavorable 
book-review,  nor  to  overestimate  the  publisher's  fear  of  such  a  review.  The 
publisher  who  wishes  to  sell  his  books  in  large  numbers  (we  speak  sometimes 
of  this  natural  wish  as  if  there  were  something  reprehensible  about  it!)  does 
not  care  a  great  deal  whether  one  of  his  books  is  praised  or  blamed  so  long  as 
it  is  not  ignored.  He  would  far  rather  see  it  given  a  column  of  stinging  abuse 
than  to  have  it  turned  off  with  a  few  lines  of  faint  praise.  I  think  you 
will  agree  that  you  would  rather  see  a  column  of  blame  allotted  to  a  book 
which  you  had  written,  than  to  feel  that  the  critic  and  editor  thought  it 
was  of  no  particular  importance  one  way  or  the  other.  So  far  as  commercial 
success  is  concerned,  unfavorable  reviews  may  now  and  then  spoil  a  book's 
chance  of  success,  as  they  certainly  may  help  to  ruin  a  play;  but  there  are 
too  many  proofs  that  the  popular  novelist  can  laugh  at  the  bitterest  attacks 
which  reviewers  may  make.  Marie  Corelli  wore,  like  a  sort  of  garland,  whole 
pages  of  adverse  criticism,  sneering  comment,  ridicule  and  abuse.  She  pointed 
to  her  enormous  sales,  her  thousands  of  readers,  and  her  place  firm  in  the 
hearts  of  the  indiscriminating  crowd.  When  one  of  Mrs.  Florence  Barclay's 
sweety-sweety  novels  was  published,  almost  every  newspaper  in  New  York 
praised  it.  The  conspicuous  exception  was  the  Evening  Post.  The  publishers 
quoted  a  few  lines  of  praise,  some  of  it  laid  on  exceedingly  thick,  from  all 
these  papers,  then  tacked  to  the  end,  in  a  prominent  position,  a  few  lines  of 
ridicule  from  the  Post,  and  printed  the  whole  thing  as  an  advertisement  in  a 
number  of  newspapers,  including  the  Post  itself. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  13 

§9 

In  regard  to  the  other  comment  of  Mr.  Perry,  about  American  book- 
reviewing —  that  it  lacks  candor,  trained  intelligence,  and  distinction  —  that 
is  true,  but  not  novel.  Many  of  the  attacks  upon  book-reviewing  are  unduly 
severe.  Mr.  Thompson,  in  the  article  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  which  I  have 
quoted,  was  inclined  to  be  rather  strict  with  the  book-reviewers,  as  well  as 
with  authors,  who  do  not  maintain  the  dignity  of  literature  and  keep  small 
personalities  about  themselves  out  of  print.  A  number  of  years  ago,  Pro- 
fessor Brander  Matthews  wrote  an  essay  called  "Literary  Criticism  and  Book- 
Reviewing."  ^  He  speaks  of  those  who  make  ". .  .a  three-fold  assumption: 
—  first,  that  it  is  the  chief  duty  of  the  critic  to  tear  the  mask  from  impostors 
and  to  rid  the  earth  of  the  incompetent;  second,  that  the  critics  of  the  past 
accepted  this  obligation  and  were  successful  in  its  accomplishment;  and  third, 
that  there  is  to-day,  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  a  special  need 
for  this  corrective  criticism." 

Mr.  Matthews  denies  the  truth  of  all  these  assumptions.  His  article  is 
extremely  sensible,  and  valuable  to  read  in  connection  with  Bliss  Perry's  indict- 
ments of  book-reviewing.  Although  written  some  years  before  Mr.  Perry's 
articles,  it  is  in  the  nature  of  an  answer  to  them,  stating,  as  it  does,  the  other 
side.  He  wrote  in  reply  to  a  British  author  of  a  volume  of  "Ephemera  Critica," 
and  at  the  beginning  makes  the  distinction,  which  I  have  already  quoted 
between  book-reviews  and  literary  criticism: 

"The  aim  of  book-reviewing  is  to  engage  in  discussion  of  our  contem- 
poraries, and  this  is  why  book-reviewing,  which  is  a  department  of  journalism, 
must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  criticism,  which  is  a  department  of  litera- 
ture. This  is  why  also  we  need  not  worry  ourselves  overmuch  about  the 
present  condition  of  book-reviewing,  since  it  has  not  all  the  importance  which 
the  British  author  of  "Ephemera  Critica"  has  claimed  for  it  and  since  it  can 
really  have  very  little  influence  upon  the  future  of  literature.  As  a  fact,  the 
condition  of  book-reviewing  is  not  now  so  lamentable  as  the  British  author 
has  declared,  and  it  is  not  indeed  really  worse  than  it  was  in  earlier  years; 
but  it  might  be  very  much  worse  than  it  is,  and  very  much  worse  than  it  ever 
was,  without  its  having  any  unfortunate  influence  on  the  development  of  a 
single  man  of  genius.  Indeed,  genius  never  more  surely  reveals  itself  as 
genius  than  in  its  ability  to  withstand  the  pressure  of  contemporary  fashion 
and  go  on  doing  its  own  work  in  its  own  way." 


*  It  may  be  found  in  his  "Gateways  to  Literature." 


14  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

In  regard  to  the  notion  that  there  were  so  many  great  book-reviewers  in 
the  golden  past,  Mr.  Matthews  relates  this  experience: 

"In  my  leisurely  youth,  when  I  had  all  the  time  there  was,  I  bought  a 
forty-year  file  of  a  London  weekly  of  lofty  pretensions  and  of  a  certain  an- 
tiquity, since  it  has  now  existed  for  more  than  threescore  years  and  ten;  and 
in  the  course  of  a  twelvemonth  I  turned  every  page  of  those  solid  tomes,  not 
reading  every  line,  of  course,  but  not  neglecting  a  single  number.  The  book- 
reviewing  was  painfully  uninspired,  with  little  brilliancy  in  expression  and 
with  little  insight  in  appreciation;  it  was  disfigured  by  a  certain  smug  com- 
placency which  I  find  to  be  still  a  characteristic  of  the  paper  whenever  I  chance 
now  to  glance  at  its  pages.  But  as  I  worked  through  this  contemporary  record 
of  the  unrolling  of  British  literature  from  1830  to  1870,  what  was  most  sur- 
prising was  the  fact  that  only  infrequently  indeed  did  the  book-reviewers 
bestow  full  praise  on  the  successive  publications  which  we  now  hold  to  be 
among  the  chief  glories  of  the  Victorian  reign,  and  that  the  books  most 
lavishly  eulogized  were  often  those  that  have  now  sunk  into  oblivion." 


§10 

What  kind  of  book-reviews  does  a  librarian  need  so  far  as  her  own  work 
is  concerned?  By  that  I  mean,  what  kind  will  give  her  the  readiest  help  when 
she  is  in  doubt  as  to  whether  to  buy  a  certain  book  or  not?  It  is  plain  that 
she  can  scarcely  use  the  graceful  essay  which  must  be  read  from  beginning 
to  end  in  order  to  find  the  critic's  opinion.  It  should  be  rather  short  and 
concise.  It  is  perhaps  easier  to  find  a  satisfactory  review  of  a  work  of  fact, 
than  of  the  various  branches  of  imaginative  literature,  such  as  fiction,  poetry, 
and  the  drama.  After  all,  book-reviews  of  contemporary  works  in  these  classes 
of  literature  are  not  much  more  than  expressions  of  personal  opinion.  And 
the  personal  opinion  of  a  young  man  who  will  graduate  from  Columbia  next 
year,  or  of  a  girl  who  graduated  from  Bryn  Mawr  last  year,  is  not  necessarily 
any  more  useful  to  us  than  our  own  judgment,  supposing  that  we  can  get  time 
and  opportunity  to  form  judgment.  It  is  not  necessarily  decisive  even  though 
it  comes  to  us  through  the  pages  of  such  respectable  papers  as  The  Nation  or 
The  Dial.  This  matter  of  opinion,  of  like  and  dislike  in  belles  lettres  is  very 
difficult. 

"Aubrey  de  Vere,"  wrote  Professor  Lounsbury,^  "tells  us  of  three  con- 
versations he  held  the  very  same  day  on  the  very  same  subject  with  three 
different  authors.    Two  of  them  were  men  of  great  poetic  genius,  the  third 


^  In  the   Yale  Book  of  American  Verse. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  >  15 

was  a  man  of  distinct  poetic  talent.  The  topic  of  discussion  in  each  case  was 
the  poetry  of  Burns.  The  difference  of  opinion  expressed  struck  him  as 
remarkable.  The  first  with  whom  he  talked  was  Tennyson.  'Read  the  ex- 
quisite songs  of  Burns,'  exclaimed  that  poet,  'in  shape  each  of  them  has  the 
perfection  of  the  berry;  in  light  the  radiance  of  the  dewdrop;  you  forget  for 
its  sake  those  stupid  things,  his  serious  pieces.' 

"A  little  later  in  the  day  he  met  Wordsworth.  Again  the  conversation 
fell  on  Burns.  'Wordsworth,'  he  writes,  'praised  him  even  more  vehemently 
than  Tennyson  had  done,  as  the  great  genius  who  had  brought  poetry  back  to 
nature.'  "Of  course,"  he  said  in  conclusion,  "I  refer  to  his  serious  efforts, 
such  as  'The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night';  those  foolish  little  amatory  songs  of 
his  one  has  to  forget,"  '  On  the  evening  of  this  same  day  he  chanced  to  fall 
in  with  Henry  Taylor.  Him  he  told  of  the  different  views  expressed  by  the 
two  poets.  The  author  of  "Philip  Van  Artevelde,"  disposed  of  them  both  very 
summarily.  'Burns'  exquisite  songs  and  Burns'  serious  efforts  are  to  me  alike 
tedious  and  disagreeable  reading,'  was  the  comment  he  made. 

"The  story  is  somewhat  singular"  Professor  Lounsbury  continues,  "but 
after  all  it  is  much  more  singular  for  the  rapidity  with  which  the  expression 
of  these  varying  views  chanced  to  follow  one  another  than  for  the  views  ex- 
pressed. The  disparagement  of  great  poetic  work  by  writers,  themselves  of 
great  poetic  ix)wer,  and  likewise  the  extraordinary  praise  lavished  by  them 
upon  very  ordinary  verse,  are  both  significant  facts  which  can  hardly  fail  to 
arrest  at  times  the  attention  of  the  student  of  literature.  The  history  of  letters, 
in  truth,  abounds  in  singular  judgments  which  men  of  genius  have  passed  upon 
the  productions  of  other  men  of  genius.  It  is  often  hard  to  tell  which  is  the 
more  remarkable  —  the  mean  opinion  which  these  entertain  of  what  the  rest 
of  the  world  has  approved,  or  the  admiration  they  have  or  profess  to  have 
for  what  the  rest  of  the  world  refuses  to  regard  with  favor. 

"Many  will  recall  the  lofty  scorn  which  Matthew  Arnold  poured  upon 
the  men  who  for  generations  had  admired  and  enjoyed  Macaulay's  'Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome.'  He  proclaimed  that  a  man's  power  to  detect  the  ring  of 
false  metal  in  these  pieces  was  a  good  measure  of  his  fitness  to  g^ve  an  opinion 
about  poetical  matters  at  all.  The  self-sufficiency  of  this  utterance  is  as 
delicious  as  its  positiveness.  These  'Lays',  it  may  be  added,  had  been  welcomed 
with  such  intense  enthusiasm  by  Christopher  North,  the  critical  lawgiver  of 
the  generation  of  their  appearance,  that  Macaulay  felt  himself  constrained  to 
make  a  personal  acknowledgment  of  the  cordiality  of  the  greeting  his  work 
had  met  from  the  then  all-powerful  reviewer  who  had  been  one  of  his  extreme 
political  adversaries." 


16  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

Professor  Lounsbiiry  points  out  the  fallibility  of  authors  as  critics:  "The 
possession  of  creative  power  is  indeed  far  from  implying  the  possession  of 
a  corresponding  degree  of  critical  judgment.  In  literature  all  of  us  have  our 
preferences  and  our  aversions.  Perhaps  even  more  than  their  inferiors  are 
men  of  genius  susceptible  to  feelings  of  this  nature  and  to  the  errors  of  judg- 
ment caused  by  them.  The  revelation  of  their  likes  and  dislikes  is  in  conse- 
quence apt  to  be  more  entertaining  than  edifying. .  ." 

"For  the  truth  is  that  in  the  case  of  works  of  the  imagination  the  settled 
judgment  of  the  great  body  of  cultivated  men  is  infinitely  superior  to  the 
judgment  of  any  one  man,  however  eminent.  Very  wisely  that  body  will  not 
in  the  long  run,  nor  ordinarily  even  in  the  short  run,  accept  the  decision  of  any 
self-constituted  censor  which  runs  counter  to  its  own  conclusions.  A  genuinely 
great  production  will  in  the  end  find  its  own  public  which  in  time  will  become 
the  public;  and  that  public  will  not  be  deterred  from  admiring  it  by  the  most 
bitter  attacks  of  the  ablest  writers  in  the  most  influential  periodicals.  In  his 
estimate  of  works  involving  special  knowledge,  the  individual  wisely  defers 
to  the  authority  of  experts.  In  works  of  the  imagination,  however,  every  man 
of  culture  is  in  varying  degrees  an  expert  himself." 


§   11 

To  sum  up:  Book-reviewing  is  to  be  distinguished  from  literary  criticism. 
The  former  is  a  branch  of  journalism;  the  latter  a  branch  of  literature.  Book- 
reviewing  suffers  from  haste  in  the  work  of  the  reviewer,  lack  of  intelligence 
and  from  commercialism, — the  control  of  the  advertiser  upon  the  literary 
department.  Yet  the  commercialism  is  only  one  fault  among  many,  and  it  is 
part  of  a  great  national  evil.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  criticising  is 
judging,  which  does  not  mean  blaming  altogether.  "The  fine  art  of  praising" 
is  sometimes  part  of  a  critic's  duty. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  book-reviewing  of  to-day  has  degenerated 
from  a  noble  past.  The  reviewing  of  former  days  was  faulty  and  unsatisfac- 
tory, often  absurdly  savage  in  its  attacks.  This  will  be  shown  still  further 
in  a  discussion  of  English  reviews. 

Book-reviews  for  a  librarian's  use  must  be  prompt,  they  ought  to  be  brief 
and  clear;  they  should  express  an  opinion.  On  imaginative  literature  they  are 
most  apt  to  be  doubtful,  and  the  librarian  should  be  able  to  judge  for  herself. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  17 

II 

§1 

It  is  said  that  the  first  English  review  of  a  book  in  the  modern  sense 
was  a  tract,  by  John  Dennis,  on  a  fashionable  epic  of  the  moment,  published 
in  1696.  It  is  not  necessary,  however,  for  us  to  go  back  so  far  as  that,  and 
it  is  impossible  in  an  hour's  talk,  to  make  an  attempt  to  study  English  book- 
reviewing  from  its  beginning.  It  is  worth  while  to  look  back  about  a  hun- 
dred years,  and  to  consider  what  is  undoubtedly  the  most  famous  period 
of  book-reviewing  in  the  English  language.  Not  only  do  the  famous  book- 
reviewers,  their  writings  and  their  victims,  illustrate  a  number  of  points  which 
are  important  to-day,  but  the  men  and  the  period  are  intensely  interesting  in 
themselves.  The  time  is  that  of  the  opening  years  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
when  Europe  was  convulsed,  exactly  as  it  is  now,  in  a  terrible  struggle  to  rid 
itself  of  an  enemy  of  human  liberty.  We  know  to-day  that  the  period  is  famous 
in  English  literature,  and  that,  so  far  as  creative  work  is  concerned,  there 
were  giants  in  those  days.  The  age  of  reason  had  passed,  and  the  tide  of 
romance  was  flowing.  Scott  was  soon  to  start  writing  his  novels;  Coleridge, 
Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Byron,  Keats,  and  Southey  were  publishing  their  poems. 


§2 

The  Edinburgh  Rcviezc,  the  first  of  the  famous  book-reviewing  maga- 
zines, was  founded  in  1802.*  From  the  beginning  Francis  Jeffrey  was  its 
editor.  He  held  that  post  for  twenty-seven  years,  and  he  continued  to  write 
for  it  for  about  forty-six  years.  He  would  be  personally  interesting  if  for  no 
other  reason,  as  the  author  of  one  of  the  most  famous  book-reviews  ever 
printed,  —  that  on  Wordsworth's  "The  Excursion."  He  was  a  young  Scotch 
advocate,  educated  at  the  Universities  of  Glasgow  and  Oxford,  and  practic- 
ing law  in  his  native  city  of  Edinburgh.  He  was  invited  to  conduct  the 
Reviezv,  and  did  so  until  1829,  when  he  was  appointed  Chief  of  the  Faculty 
of  Advocates  and  resigned  his  post  to  Macvey  Napier.  Jeffrey  became  Lord 
Advocate  of  Scotland  in  1830;  doubtless  a  very  important  post,  but  one  chiefly 
interesting  to  readers  of  English  novels  because  of  Lord  Advocate  Grant  and 
his  fascinating  daughter,  who  appear  in  the  pages  of  "David  Balfour."  Later 
Jeffrey  became  a  judge,  as  Lord  Jeffrey,  and  sat  upon  the  bench  until  his 


•  Any  reader  familiar  with  Mr.  R.  Brimley  Johnson's  volume  "Famous  Reviews,"  will  see  that  I  am 
greatly  indebted  to  it  for  information. 


18  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

death  in  1850.  He  was  beyond  compare  the  arch-critic  of  the  old  school, 
dictator  of  literature,  who  uttered  his  judgments  with  the  authority  of  a 
Pope  speaking  ex  cathedra.  Physically  he  was  a  small  man,  but  when  he  sat 
in  the  chair  of  the  editor  of  the  Edinburgh,  he  roared  like  all  the  bulls  of 
Bashan.  Thomas  Carlyle  speaks  of  him  as  delicate  and  attractive,  a  dainty 
little  figure  hardly  five  feet  four  inches  in  height. 

In  considering  the  fact  that  Jeffrey  frequently  treated  authors  very  much 
as  though  they  were  guilty  prisoners  at  the  bar,  and  he  the  judge  upon  the 
bench,  wearing  the  black  cap  and  about  to  pronounce  sentence  of  execution, 
it  must  not  be  thought  that  he  was  entirely  a  wielder  of  the  club.  It  is  true, 
that  he  believed  one  of  his  principal  duties  was,  as  Mr.  Gosse  says,  to  put  an 
extinguisher  on  small  men  of  letters.  But  his  standards  were  those  of  the 
eighteenth  century;  he  did  not  understand  the  nineteenth.  Campbell  was  an 
eighteenth  century  poet,  and  so  he  praises  Campbell.  Byron,  Keats,  and 
Wordsworth  were  nineteenth  century  poets,  and  consequently  fell  under  his 
displeasure.  He  did  not  understand  the  new  spirit,  and  thought  whatever 
was  new  was  surely  bad.  He  finds  something  to  blame  in  Keats,  but  also 
something  to  praise.  In  a  review  of  Keats's  poems  in  1820  he  says  that  he 
has  been  exceedingly  struck  with  the  genius  which  they  display  and  the  spirit 
of  poetry  which  breathes  through  all  their  "extravagance."  Here,  surely,  is 
a  case  of  criticism  repeating  itself.  Do  not  the  comments  of  Lord  Jeffrey 
upon  Keats  sound  very  much  like  those  of  some  staid  book-reviewer  to-day 
dealing  with  such  rebels  as  Vachell  Lindsay  or  the  author  of  that  extraordinary 
book,  "The  Spoon  River  Anthology"  ? 

In  Lord  Jeffrey's  career  there  is  a  case  of  a  book-review  leading  to  a 
duel,  as  in  the  century  before,  when  precise  mannered  English  gentlemen 
fought  with  rapiers  over  the  correct  scansion  of  a  line  of  poetry.  Jeffrey 
reviewed  the  poems  of  Thomas  Moore,  with  the  result  that  arrangements 
were  made  for  a  duel  between  the  reviewer  and  the  poet.  The  police,  however, 
had  orders  to  interrupt  and  there  was  no  bloodshed. 

The  solemnity  and  finality  of  his  sentence  of  literary  death  pronounced 
upon  Wordsworth,  can  hardly  be  surpassed.  Beginning  with  the  famous 
sentence  "This  will  never  do,"  Lord  Jeffrey  seems  to  believe  that  he  has 
retired  the  poet  to  obscurity  forever.  The  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  he  says,  wavered 
between  "silliness  and  pathos,"  but  "The  Excursion"  makes  him  perceive  that 
"the  case  of  Mr.  Wordsworth.  .  .is  now  manifestly  hopeless;  and  we  give  him 
up  as  altogether  incurable."  He  had  found  in  Wordsworth  "occasional  gleams 
of  tenderness  and  beauty,"  but  now  he  must  consider  him  "finally  lost  to  the 
good  cause  of  poetry." 


BOOK-REVIEWS  19 

As  we  all  know,  Wordsworth  frequently  wrote  things  marked  by  bathos 
and  absurdity,  but  if  we  consider  the  reputation  accorded  to  his  work  as  a 
whole,  it  is  only  necessary  to  read  Jeffrey's  review  (in  the  Edinburgh,  Novem- 
ber, 1814).  to  recognize  truth  in  the  saying  that  *'the  whole  history  of  criticism 
has  been  a  triumph  of  authors  over  critics." 

Lord  Brougham  was  an  associate  of  Jeffrey  in  the  foundation  of  the 
Edinburgh  Reviezv,  and  is  said  to  have  written  eighty  articles  for  the  first 
twenty  numbers  of  it.  In  later  years,  Walter  Savage  Landor  spoke  of  the 
better  spirit  which  then  prevailed  in  the  Edinburgh  from  the  generosity  and 
genius  of  Macaulay.  "But,"  says  Landor,  "in  the  days  when  Brougham  and 
his  'confederates'  were  writers  in  it,  more  falsehood  and  more  malignity  marked 
its  pages  than  in  any  other  journal  in  the  language."  Brougham  (or  possibly 
Jeffrey)  was  the  author  of  the  review  of  Byron's  "Hours  of  Idleness." 

Byron  published  it  in*  1807.  It  was  praised  in  the  Critical  Review,  of 
September,  1807,  and  abused  in  the  first  number  of  the  Satirist.  In  January, 
1808,  the  famous  criticism  came  out  in  the  Edinburgh  Rez'iezv.  It  has  been 
said  of  the  review  that  its  want  of  critical  acumen  is  less  obvious  than  the 
needless  cruelty  of  the  wound  inflicted  upon  a  boy's  harmless  vanity.  Byron 
was  deeply  hurt.  He  had  already  under  way  a  satirical  poem,  which  he  now 
carefully  polished.  "English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,"  appeared  in  the 
middle  of  the  following  March  and  at  once  made  a  hit. 


§3 

This  is  the  way  he  countered  upon  the  Edinburgh  critics: 

A  man  must  serve  his  time  to  every  trade 
Save  censure  —  critics  all  are  ready  made. 
Take  hackneyed  jokes  from  Miller,  got  by  rote, 
With  just  enough  of  learning  to  misquote; 
A  mind  well  skilled  to  find  or  forge  a  fault; 
A  turn  for  punning,  call  it  Attic  salt; 
To  Jeffrey  go,  be  silent  and  discreet. 
His  pay  is  just  ten  sterling  pounds  per  sheet: 
Fear  not  to  lie,  't  will  seem  a  sharper  hit; 
Shrink  not  from  blasphemy,  't  will  pass  for  wit; 
Care  not  for  feeling  —  pass  your  proper  jest, 
And  stand  a  critic,  hated  yet  caressed. 


20  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

And  shall  we  own  such  judgment?    no  —  as  soon 

Seek  roses  in  December  —  ice  in  June; 

Hope  constancy  in  wind,  or  corn  in  chaff; 

Believe  a  woman  or  an  epitaph, 

Or  any  other  thing  that's  false,  before 

You  trust  in  critics,  who  themselves  are  sore; 

Or  yield  one  single  thought  to  be  misled 

By  Jeffrey's  heart,  or  Lambe's  Boeotian  head. 

To  these  young  tyrants,  by  themselves  misplaced, 
Combined  usurpers  on  the  throne  of  taste; 
To  these,  when  authors  bend  in  humble  awe, 
And  hail  their  voice  as  truth,  their  word  as  law  — 
While  these  are  censors,  't  would  be  sin  to  spare; 
While  such  are  critics,  why  should  I  forbear? 
But  yet,  so  near  all  modern  worthies  run, 
'Tis  doubtful  whom  to  seek,  or  whom  to  shun; 
Nor  know  we  when  to  spare,  or  where  to  strike, 
Our  bards  and  censors  are  so  much  alike. 

Then  should  you  ask  me,  why  I  venture  o'er 

The  path  which  Pope  and  Gifford  trod  before; 

If  not  yet  sickened,  you  can  still  proceed: 

Go  on;  my  rhyme  will  tell  you  as  you  read. 

"But  hold!"  exclaims  a  friend,  —  "here's  some  neglect: 

This  —  that  —  and  t'other  line  seem  incorrect." 

What  then?  the  self-same  blunder  Pope  has  got. 

And  careless  Dryden  —  "Ay,  but  Pye  has  not":  — 

Indeed !  —  'tis  granted,  faith !  —  but  what  care  I  ? 

Better  to  err  with  Pope,  than  shine  with  Pye.  . 

Another  founder  of  the  Edinburgh,  and  one  of  its  reviewers  was  Sydney 
Smith,  the  only  one  of  the  trio,  apparently,  who  was  really  witty.  He  poked 
fun  at  Miss  Hannah  More  in  very  much  the  same  way  that  a  light  and  amus- 
ing writer  of  to-day,  say,  Mr.  E.  S.  Martin  of  Life,  might  enjoy  jesting  about 
some  serious  reformer,  such  as  Dr.  Anna  Shaw. 


The  second  of  the  famous  reviews  was  the  Quarterly,  founded  in  1809, 
with  William  Gifford  as  its  editor.    Gifford,  it  is  said,  undoubtedly  established 


BOOK-REVIEWS  21 

the  reputation  of  this  magazine  for  scurrility.  He  was  known  as  the  man 
who  did  the  "butchering  business"  in  political  journalism.  His  bludgeon  was 
far  heavier  than  Jeffrey's.  Hazlitt  declared  that  Gifford  believed  that  mod- 
ern literature  should  wear  the  fetters  of  classical  antiquity;  that  truth  is  to 
be  weighed  in  the  scales  of  opinion  and  prejudice;  that  power  is  equivalent 
to  right;  that  genius  is  dependent  on  rules;  that  taste  and  refinement  of 
language  consist  in  word-catching.  Gif  ford's  review  of  Keats's  "Endymion," 
called  forth  Byron's  famous  apostrophe  to: 

John  Keats,  who  was  killed  of  f  by  one  critique 
Just  as  he  really  promised  something  great, 

If  not  intelligible,  without  Greek 

Contrived  to  talk  about  the  gods  of  late 

Much  as  they  might  have  been  supposed  to  speak. 
Poor  fellow !  his  was  an  untoward  fate; 

'Tis  strange  the  mind,  that  very  fiery  particle, 

Should  let  itself  be  snuff'd  out  by  one  article. 

The  attacks  on  Keats  appeared  both  in  Blackzvood's  Magazine  and  the 
Quarterly  Rcvietii.  The  Blackzvood  article  was  Number  4  of  the  series  bear- 
ing the  signature  "Z"  on  "The  Cockney  School  of  Poetry."  The  previous 
articles  of  the  same  series  had  been  a  series  of  preposterous  insults  directed 
against  Leigh  Hunt.  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin  thinks  it  is  not  quite  certain  who 
wrote  them,  but  that  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  they  were  the  work 
of  John  Wilson,  suggested  and  perhaps  revised  by  the  publisher,  William 
Blackwood.  The  Edinburgh  critics  attacked  Hunt's  opinions,  his  weaknesses 
as  a  writer,  and  proceeded  to  gross  accusations  of  vice  and  infamy.  The 
articles  on  Hunt  included  several  allusions  to  "Johnny  Keats,"  representing 
him  as  a  puling  satellite  of  Hunt.  The  attack  was  merely  a  tirade  of  the  sort 
which  one  associates  with  backwoods  journalism  of  half  a  centufy  ago. 

It  begins  with  the  words:  "Our  hatred  and  contempt  of  Leigh  Hunt," 
and  proceeds  to  accuse  him  of  "low-born  insolence,"  a  "leprous  crust  of  self- 
conceit,"  and  "loathsome  vulgarity."  This  is  the  man  who  is  remembered 
to-day  very  largely  for  his  innocent  rhyme:  "Jenny  Kissed  Me,"  and  for  "Abou 
Ben  Adhem" !  But  Blackzvood's  speaks  of  Hunt's  "polluted  muse."  "We 
were  the  first."  writes  the  reviewer,  "to  brand  with  a  burning  iron  the  false 
face  of  this  kept-mistress  of  a  demoralizing  incendiary.  We  tore  off  her 
gaudy  veil  and  transparent  drapery,  and  exhibited  the  painted  cheeks  and 
writhing  limbs  of  the  prostitute." 


22  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

It  seems  difficult  to  believe  that  Lockhart,  son-in-law  of  Sir  Walter  Scott 
and  the  author  of  the  biography  of  Scott,  could  have  written  the  attack 
on  Keats,  —  the  fourth  of  the  series.  Mr.  Sidney  Colvin,  however,  thinks 
that  it  was  all  but  absolutely  proved  that  Lockhart  was  really  the  author  of 
it.  Then  followed  the  articles  in  The  Quarterly  Review,  on  Keats's  "Endy- 
mion,"  probably  written  by  Gifford,  the  editor.  The  review,  it  has  been  said, 
is  quite  in  Gif ford's  manner,  —  that  of  a  man  insensible  to  the  higher  charm 
of  poetry,  incapable  of  judging  it  except  by  mechanical  rule  and  precedent, 
and  careless  of  the  pain  he  gives.  Considering  the  perfect  modesty  and  good 
judgment  with  which  Keats  had  in  his  preface  pointed  out  the  weakness  of 
his  own  work,  both  attacks  are  inexcusable. 

"Endymion,"  says  the  critic,  is  "calm,  settled,  imperturbable,  drivelling 
idiocy."  (It  will  be  well  to  remember  that  the  next  time  you  hear  vigorous 
denunciation  of  a  contemporaneous  book.)  The  review  ends  with  the  famous 
cruel  reference  to  Keats  —  who  is  called  a  "starving  apothecary," —  "so  back 
to  the  shop,  Mr.  John,  back  to  plasters,  pills,  and  ointment  boxes,  &c." 

The  poet's  friends  arose  in  his  defense,  and  there  was  a  warfare  of  articles, 
ending,  so  far  as  two  of  the  writers  were  concerned,  in  some  bloodshed.  John 
Scott,  the  editor  of  the  London  Magazine,  was  shortly  afterwards  killed  in  a 
duel  by  a  friend  of  Lockhart.  The  duel  arose  from  these  very  quarrels  about 
the  Blackzvood  articles.  Keats  took  the  attacks  upon  himself  very  calmly, 
although  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  was  for  a  while  immensely  discouraged 
by  them.  He  said  that  he  would  write  no  more  poetry,  but  try  to  serve  the 
world  in  some  other  way.  Afterwards  he  recovered  his  poise,  and  fortunately 
for  English  literature,  continued  to  write.  Many  of  his  friends,  however, 
fully  believed  that  his  early  death  was  caused  more  or  less  directly  by  these 
savage  onslaughts.    Byron's  jingle  is  well  known: 

Who  killed  John  Keats? 
"I,"  said  The  Quarterly, 
So  savage  and  Tartarly, 
"I  killed  John  Keats." 

Considering  the  nature  of  the  disease  from  which  Keats  suffered,  it  is  not 
at  all  improbable  that  these  criticisms  may  have  indirectly  hastened  his  death. 
He  spoke  about  the  subject  with  noble  simplicity: 

"I  cannot  but  feel  indebted  to  those  gentlemen  who  have  taken  my  part.. 
As  for  the  rest,  I  begin  to  get  a  little  acquainted  with  my  own  strength  and 
weakness.     Praise  or  blame  has  but  a  momentary  effect  on  the  man  whose 
love  of  beauty  in  the  abstract  makes  him  a  severe  critic  on  his  own  works. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  23 

My  own  domestic  criticism  has  given  me  pain  without  comparison  beyond 
what  Blackwood  or  the  Quarterly  could  possibly  inflict:  and  also  when  I  feel 
I  am  right,  no  external  praise  can  give  me  such  a  glow  as  my  own  solitary 
reperception  and  ratification  of  what  is  fine." 

And  again:  "There  have  been  two  letters  in  my  defence  in  the  Chronicle, 
and  one  in  the  Examiner,  copied  from  the  Exeter  paper,  and  written  by 
Reynolds.  I  don't  know  who  wrote  those  in  the  Chronicle.  This  is  a  mere 
matter  of  the  moment:  I  think  I  shall  be  among  the  English  Poets  after  my 
death.  Even  as  a  matter  of  present  interest,  the  attempt  to  crush  me  in  the 
Quarterly,  has  only  brought  me  more  into  notice,  and  it  is  a  common  expres- 
sion among  bookmen,  *I  wonder  the  Quarterly  should  cut  its  own  throat.'  " 

Another  critic  who  wrote  for  the  Quarterly,  was  John  Wilson  Croker, 
who  is  immortal  for  one  remark  which  Macaulay  made  about  him:  "I  hate 
him,"  said  Macaulay,  "worse  than  cold  boiled  veal."  After  all,  and  in  spite 
of  the  animosity,  rancor,  and  venom  which  characterized  a  good  deal  of  the 
criticism  and  counter-criticism  of  literary  men  in  those  days,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  some  of  them  had  a  power  of  expression  which  added  salt  to  life. 
Doubtless  we  could  name  public  men  of  to-day  who  hate  one  another  worse 
than  cold  boiled  veal,  but  few  of  them  would  have  such  vigorous  thought  and 
power  of  expression. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  was  also  a  critic  on  the  Quarterly  Review.  Scott's  criti- 
cal writings  usually  contain  something  generous  about  every  writer  they  have 
occasion  to  mention.  His  fine  and  intelligent  praise  of  Jane  Austen  is  well 
remembered.  He  showed  therein  that  he  appreciated  the  qualities  in  her  work 
which  was  absent  in  his  own. 


§5 

The  third  of  the  great  reviewing  magazines,  and  the  last  one  of  this  group 
which  we  can  consider,  was  Blackzvooil's  Magazine,  founded  in  1817.  This 
has  already  been  mentioned,  in  connection  with  the  assaults  upon  Keats.  With 
Blackwood's  is  associated  the  name  of  John  Wilson,  as  literary  editor,  from 
1817  to  1852.  His  pen-name  was  Christopher  North.  Wilson  was  an  athlete 
as  well  as  a  man  of  letters,  and  there  are  fine  stories  of  his  spending  the  night 
in  drinking  and  singing  songs  with  his  friends,  and  starting  out  at  daybreak  to 
run  from  London  to  Cambridge.  Charles  Dickens  declared  that  he  was  a 
patron  of  cock-fighting,  wrestling,  pugilistic  contests,  boat-racing  and  horse- 
racing.    "He  was  fond  of  all  stimulating  things,"  said  Carlyle,  "from  tragic 


24  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

poetry  to  whiskey-punch."    Tennyson  repHed  to  one  of  Christopher  North's 
criticisms  in  the  verse: 

You  did  late  review  my  lays', 

Crusty  Christopher; 
You  did  mingle  blame  and  praise 

Rusty  Christopher. 
When  I  learnt  from  whence  it  came, 
I  forgave  you  all  the  blame 

Musty  Christopher 
I  could  not  forgive  the  praise 

Fusty  Christopher! 


I  have  not  dwelt  upon  this  side  of  the  famous  reviews  in  order  to  make 
out  that  they  were  altogether  bad  and  untrustworthy.  Their  violent  attempts 
to  crush  writers,  whom  they  often  entirely  misunderstood  or  were  incapable 
of  appreciating,  were,  however,  the  things  for  which  they  are  most  famous. 
It  is  useful  for  us  to  know  about  their  violence  and  their  blunders,  lest  we 
pay  too  much  heed  to  the  reviewers  to-day.  Nearly  all  of  these  old  reviews 
are  alive  to-day,  —  old-fashioned  in  appearance,  bulky,  and  solemn,  but  a 
good  deal  sweetened  in  temper.  They  are  usually  behind  the  times,  and  proud 
of  it;  but  they  are  solid  and  dignified.  Certainly  not  up-to-date,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  cheaper  magazines,  they  are,  nevertheless,  well  edited 
and  authoritative.  They  review  but  few  books,  and  they  are  usually  late  in 
doing  this.    So  for  book-reviewing  they  are  seldom  useful  to  librarians. 

Now,  we  come  to  the  weekly  reviews,  of  a  later  generation. 

The  Saturday  Review  was  founded  in  1855.  It  is  not  primarily  a  literary 
review,  but  is  of  a  general  nature,  devoted  especially  to  politics,  literature, 
science  and  art.  It  is  conservative,  not  to  say  high  Tory,  in  its  politics,  and  has 
always  breathed  the  spirit  of  the  old  universities,  the  established  church,  the 
conservative  party,  and  classical  scholarship.  A  short  story,  published  about 
twenty  years  ago,  contains  a  few  sentences  descriptive  of  the  Saturday  Review, 
and  of  the  mental  attitude  of  many  of  its  readers.  One  Englishman  met 
another  sitting  on  a  park  bench  somewhere  in  Ital)^  One  of  them  pulled 
a  copy  of  the  Saturday  out  of  his  pocket  and  began  to  read  it,  remarking  that 
it  was  the  Bible  of  the  Englishman  when  travelling.     The  other  said,  "Yes, 


BOOK-REVIEWS  25 

Shakespeare  we  have  to  share  with  the  Americans;  but,  damn  it,  the  Saturday 
Review  is  all  our  own !" 

You  can  hardly  get  the  spirit  of  the  vanished  England  of  a  generation 
ago  better  than  by  turning  to  a  volume  anywhere  in  the  1870's  or  80's.  It 
never  approved  of  the  United  States  of  America;  and  anything,  whether  a 
book,  a  man,  or  a  custom,  which  hailed  from  this  country  was  in  its  eyes 
presumably  wrong.  So  far  as  one  can  discover,  the  reason  for  this  attitude 
was  that  we  have  a  republican  form  of  government  from  which,  in  the  view 
of  your  fine,  old,  crusted  Tory,  no  good  thing  can  come.  This  attitude  toward 
America  was  maintained  in  the  Saturday  Rcviezv  until  recent  years,  and  was 
still  apparent  as  late  as  the  outbreak  of  the  Spanish  War,  in  1898.  The  Review 
freely  predicted  disaster  for  us  if  we  should  attempt  to  try  conclusions  with 
Spain,  but  had  its  predictions  falsified  by  the  outcome  of  the  Battle  of  Santiago. 
Inasmuch  as  the  Tory  spirit  is  quick  to  acclaim  success,  the  Saturday  Review 
had  to  admit  that  the  victory  of  the  American  fleet  was  complete,  and  the 
action  of  our  sailors  toward  their  defeated  enemies  beyond  criticism.  The 
editor  seemed  to  stutter  as  he  uttered  his  praise,  and  it  was  with  obvious  relief 
that  he  turned,  in  the  next  paragraph,  to  condemn  the  bad  conduct  of  the 
French  mariners  on  the  sinking  liner,  "La  Bourgogne,"  for  France  had  been 
a  hereditary  enemy  as  well  as  this  country.  It  is  looking  back  into  English 
history  to  remember  these  old  enmities  and  animosities.  Things  are  changed 
to-day ! 

The  Saturday  Reviezu  kept  up  the  tradition  of  a  severe,  not  to  say  savage, 
critical  journal.  It  denounced  Thackeray  for  his  lectures  on  "The  Four 
Georges,"  and  made  violent  onslaughts  upon  Dickens.  In  the  number  for 
January  3,  1857,  it  contained  an  article  on  Dickens  as  a  politician,  in  which 
it  objected  to  the  novelist's  attacks  upon  the  abuses  of  his  day  almost  exactly 
as  some  journals  now  denounce  the  novelists  who  refuse  to  flatter  the  powers 
that  be  in  politics  and  religion.  "Who,"  asks  the  Saturday  Revieiv,  "takes 
Mr.  Dickens  seriously?  Is  it  not  as  foolish  to  estimate  his  melodramatic 
and  sentimental  stock  in  trade  gravely  as  it  would  be  to  undertake  a  refuta- 
tion of  the  jests  of  the  clown  in  a  Christmas  pantomime?"  It  solemnly  pro- 
tests against  Dickens's  legitimate  satirization  of  the  Court  of  Chancery  in 
"Bleak  House,"  and  objects  to  the  picture  of  a  government  office  as  repre- 
sented by  the  Circumlocution  Office  in  "Little  Dorrit."  It  made  that  final 
and  crushing  charge  against  Dickens,  that  he  only  wanted  to  sell  his  books. 
The  Saturday  admitted,  in  the  manner  of  its  kind,  that  no  doubt  there  are 
great  abuses  in  the  country,  and  much  that  wants  reform  in  Parliament  and 
in  the  law.     And  then  it  went  on,  exactly  as  its  prototypes  do  to-day,  and 


26  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

will  do  SO  long  as  the  world  lasts,  to  object  to  the  manner  of  the  criticism 
and  to  imply  that  nobody  has  any  right  to  criticise  except  the  persons  criti- 
cised. Consequently,  it  would  follow  that  there  should  never  be  any  criticism 
of  anything!  In  a  final  delightful  paragraph  it  declares  that  Dickens  is 
utterly  destitute  of  any  kind  of  solid  requirements,  absolutely  ignorant  of 
law  and  politics;  does  not  know  his  own  meaning;  does  not  see  the  conse- 
quences of  his  own  teaching;  and  is  unable  to  play  any  part  in  any  movement 
more  significant  than  that  of  the  fly,  and  generally  a  gad-fly,  on  the  wheel. 
Again,  speaking  of  "Bleak  House"  and  "Little  Dorrit,"  the  Saturday  Review 
remarked  that  they  were  both  "paltry,  dry  bundles  of  nonsense." 

As  a  result  of  its  attacks  on  various  writers,  including,  by  the  way,  Long- 
fellow, Froude.  Lytton,  and  the  Kingsleys,  Charles  and  Henry,  it  became 
variously  called  "The  Saturday  Snarl,"  "The  Saturday  Scorpion."  "The  Satur- 
day Slasher,"  "The  Saturday  Butcher,"  and  "The  Saturday  Reviler."  In 
spite  of  its  frequent  savagery,  it  has  maintained  a  high  level  of  scholarship; 
while  fear  of  its  attacks  upon  faulty  English  and  slipshod  writing  have  prob- 
.ably  had  a  good  effect.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  James  Grant,  the  writer  of 
a  severe  criticism  of  the  Saturday  Revieiv,  declared  sarcastically  that  its  abuse 
was  desirable,  for  that  the  very  fact  that  it  praised  an  author  was  presumptive 
proof  that  he  was  a  man  of  inferior  merit. 


§8 

The  Athenaeum,  another  weekly,^  was  founded  in  1828  by  James  Silk 
Buckingham,  who  aimed,  he  said,  to  make  it  "like  the  Athenaeum  of  antiquity, 
a  resort  of  the  most  distinguished  philosophers,  historians,  orators,  and  poets 
of  the  day."  The  Athenaeum,  unlike  the  Saturday  Revieiv,  is  first  and  fore- 
most a  book-review  periodical;  its  sub-title  is  "Journal  of  English  and  Foreign 
Literature,  Science,  the  Fine  Arts,  Music,  and  the  Drama."  It  has  never  been 
famous  for  severe  attacks  upon  writers,  and  when  it  celebrated  its  seventieth 
birthday  in  1898,  declared  with  apparent  truthfulness  that  it  had  from  the 
first  opposed  such  criticism  as  that  which  the  Edinburgh  Review  had  employed 
against  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  and  Keats.  Writers  like  Charles  Lamb,  Walter 
Savage  Landor,  Thomas  Hood,  Thomas  Carlyle,  Leigh  Hunt,  Hazlitt,  and 
Mrs.  Browning,  have  been  numbered  among  its  contributors. 

The  War,  which  is  blamed  for  so  many  things  —  from  the  rise  in  price 
of  Russian  caviare  (from  the  Mississippi)  to  the  increased  cost  of  paper  and 
printing  materials  —  is  probably  responsible  for  the  change  to  monthly  form 


*  It  became  a  monthly  in  January,  1916. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  27 

of  The  Athenaeum.  Such  a  change  instantly  deprives  it  of  some  part  of  its 
value  to  librarians,  —  the  timeliness  of  its  reviews.  Before  the  change  I 
should  have  been  inclined  to  recommend  it  as  perhaps  the  best  English  book- 
reviewing  periodical  for  the  small  library  which  can  only  subscribe  to  one. 
Many  librarians  might  think  it  still  the  best  for  such  a  library,  and  they  may 
be  right.  For  The  Athenaeum  has  begun  to  cater  to  librarians  even  more  than 
does  The  Dial  in  this  country.  Working  in  harmony  with  the  Library  Associa- 
tion, it  publishes  each  month  an  annotated  list  of  new  books,  arranged  by  the 
Decimal  Classification,  with  the  best  books  for  libraries  marked  by  a  star.  The 
last  is  done  by  a  "Committee  of  Specialists"  from  the  Library  Association. 
In  other  words,  this  part  of  the  periodical  looks  like  the  A.  L.  A.  Book  List. 
It  is  a  straightforward  adoption  of  certain  American  library  methods,  and 
The  Athenaeum  has  been  frank  in  its  admiration  of  many  of  these  methods. 
We  should.  I  suppose,  be  complimented.  It  is  probably  old  fogyism  which 
makes  me  believe  I  like  The  Athenaeum  better  as  it  was. 

Do  not  think,  however,  that  its  value  has  been  decreased  by  this  work 
by  and  for  librarians.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  only  the  lessened  frequency  of 
issue  which,  generally  speaking,  could  be  lamented.  Its  reviewing  work  is  of 
a  high  average,  and  it  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  never  bitter  nor  violent  in  spirit. 
Its  typography  and  api^earance  are  pleasing. 


§9 

In  a  small  library,  the  librarian  may  have  to  prefer  one  of  the  periodicals 
of  a  general  nature,  and  so  may  choose  The  Spectator,  with  its  traditionally 
sympathetic  attitude  toward  America,  or  The  Nation  (London).  Both  of 
these  weeklies  treat  book-reviewing  seriously;  in  both,  the  reviews  are  usually 
good,  sometimes  excellent.  Whether  an  American  librarian  should  select  a 
periodical  because  it  is  friendly  in  its  tone  toward  this  country  is  a  question. 
With  our  easy-going  characteristics,  euphemistically  called  "optimism,"  a 
steady  course  of  praise  is  not  necessarily  suggested. 

A  number  of  new  reviews,  rather  too  many  to  discuss  separately,  have 
come  into  existence,  as  some  of  the  older  ones  (like  The  Academy)  have 
passed  out.  These  devote  varying  amounts  of  space  to  book-reviews.  They 
are  chiefly  useful  for  their  championship  of  "new"  and  radical  ideas,  —  about 
verse  forms,  about  freedom  in  speech,  or  rather  in  writing,  on  "sex"  subjects, 
and  about  politics  and  religion.  They  are  useful  because  of  their  champion- 
ship of  what  is  supposed  to  be  new,  and  they  are  also  to  be  distrusted  for  the 
same  reason.     In  reading  them  it  is  often  apparent  that  their  liberalism  is 


28  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

but  toryism  in  another  guise,  —  "What  I  Hke  is  good,  and  what  you  like  is 
bad."  Their  narrow-mindedness  is  sometimes  as  remarkable  as  their  tolerance, 
and  their  originality  frequently  consists  in  taking  an  ancient  maxim  and  tipping 
it  upside  down.  Twenty-five  years  ago  the  paradoxes  of  Oscar  Wilde  were 
a  new  note  in  English  letters;  to-day  they  are  old-fashioned.  It  does  not  take 
courage  now  to  defend  vers  litres  among  educated  people,  nor  to  speak  a  good 
word  for  the  "free"  novel.  It  is  conventional  to  do  so.  The  brave  man,  the 
really  "advanced"  thinker  would  be  the  one  who  would  come  boldly  to  the 
defence  of  the  despised  "Mid- Victorian"  period  in  art  and  letters. 


Ill 

§1 

The  course  of  book-reviewing  in  the  United  States  does  not  offer  the 
striking  incidents  nor  coherent  history  which  may  be  found  in  Great  Britain. 
The  latter  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  saw  the  rise  in  America,  of  a  num- 
ber of  magazines,  miscellanies,  and  "repositories,"  many  of  which  lived  for 
only  a  few  years.  Some  of  them  expired  after  the  publication  of  one  or  two 
numbers.  Their  names  are  almost  universally  forgotten,  and  are  known  only 
to  the  investigator  of  the  dry  beginnings  of  our  periodical  literature.^  With 
the  nineteenth  century  came  the  North  American  Review,  which  celebrated 
its  centennial  in  1915.  The  North  American  was  conceived  as  a  scholarly 
review,  in  the  manner  of  the  famous  quarterlies  in  England  and  Scotland. 
It  did  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  become  a  monthly  until  many  years  had  passed. 
Its  editors  were  able  and  erudite  men,  and  the  list  includes  the  names  of 
Lowell  and  of  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  From  the  first,  it  attracted  many  of 
the  best  writers  in  this  country.  The  centennial  numbers  reprinted  contribu- 
tions from  its  pages  in  the  past,  by  writers  like  Edward  Everett,  Jared  Sparks 
(the  dignified  scholar  who  succeeded  in  editing  nearly  all  the  humanity  out  of 
George  Washington),  John  Adams  and  Longfellow.  Other  contributors  were 
Bryant,  Ticknor,  Daniel  Webster,  and  George  Bancroft.  What  is  true  of 
the  English  and  Scotch  reviews  is  in  part  true  of  the  North  American.  In  its 
early  days,  the  book-reviewing  section  was  of  importance,  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  disproportion  between  the  number  of  books  reviewed  and  the  number 
published  was  not  so  great  as  to-day.  In  a  current  number  of  the  North 
American,  out  of  about  a  hundred  and  sixty  pages,  fourteen  are  devoted  to 


^  One  of  these  investigators,  whose  work  resulted  in  a  volume  far  from  dry  —  sprightly,  rather 
Mr.  Algernon  Tassin.     His  book,  "The  Magazine  in  America,"  is  valuable  and  entertaining. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  29 

book-reviews.  The  North  American  has  never  pretended  to  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  light  literature,  and  has  purposely  confined  its  reviews  to  what  it  con- 
siders more  serious  and  important  books.  It  has  moved  with  the  age:  it  no 
longer  publishes  book-reviews  of  twenty  or  thirty  pages  in  length.  Fourteen 
pages  of  reviews  in  the  current  number  to  which  I  referred,  include  notices 
of  six  books,  and  these  are  not  works  published  six  months  or  a  year  or 
two  ago,  but  are  what  may  be  called,  with  reasonable  accuracy,  recent.  So 
far  as  they  go,  then,  the  book-reviews  in  the  North  American  are  well  worth 
while,  but  it  would  be  folly  to  say  that  any  librarian  would  subscribe  to  it 
primarily  for  them. 

§2 

Another  of  America's  excellent  magazines  is,  of  course,  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  younger  by  some  decades  than  the  North  American  Review,  but 
even  more  distinguished  in  its  career.  Its  editors  include  James  Russell 
Lowell,  William  Dean  Howells,  and  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich;  and  the  list  of 
its  contributors  reads  like  a  biographical  dictionary  of  American  literature. 
Tht  Atlantic  has  had  its  lean  years.  One  of  its  editors  is  said  to  have  remarked 
that  his  predecessor  had  outdone  Moses,  for  while  Moses  made  the  Red  Sea 
dry,  this  editor  had  succeeded  in  making  the  Atlantic  dry.  Even  less  than  the 
North  American,  is  the  Atlantic  Monthly  concerned  to-day  with  book-review- 
ing. It  is  one  of  those  periodicals  quoted  in  the  Book  Review  Digest,  but  on 
looking  over  the  last  four  or  five  numbers  I  saw  only  one  article  devoted  to 
book-reviews.  This  gave  the  writer's  views  on  twenty-nine  novels  of  the  pre- 
ceding year.  It  was  a  pleasant  article,  but  rather  an  essay  on  the  fiction  of 
the  year,  to  keep  the  general  reader  posted,  than  a  series  of  reviews  useful  to 
a  librarian.  By  the  time  it  appeared  most  librarians  had  looked  over  these 
novels  and  formed  an  opinion  for  themselves,  or  adopted  one  from  some  other 
reviewing  publication,  and  the  books  had  either  been  rejected  for  purchase,  or 
else  had  been  in  circulation  for  a  number  of  months,  and  were  already  showing 
signs  of  wear. 

§3 

The  first  weekly  periodical  of  its  kind  to  be  published  in  this  country 
and  to  continue  without  break  to  the  present  day,  is  The  Nation,  founded  in 
1865,  in  New  York.  The  first  editor  of  The  Nation,  who  left  his  personality 
stamped  upon  it,  was  the  late  Edwin  L.  Godkin,  a  journalist  of  Irish  birth  and 
education.  He  had  high  motives,  strong  opinions,  great  ability,  both  as  a  writer 
and  editor,  and  a  peculiar  power  of  sarcastic  utterance.    Mr.  Godkin  had  been 


30  '  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

a  war  correspondent  and  what  he  had  seen  of  the  horrors  of  war  made  him 
become  a  Hfelong  advocate  of  international  peace.  He,  and  others,  bequeathed 
this  advocacy  to  The  Nation,  as  well  as  the  militant  attitude  toward  political 
corruption,  and  sympathy  with  the  independent  spirit  in  politics. 

James  Bryce,  comparing  The  Nation  with  English  reviews,  wrote:  "The 
Nation  resembled  the  Spectator  in  devoting  its  opening  pages  to  comments  on 
current  events,  and  also  in  the  definiteness  of  its  political  programme,  while 
it  recalled  the  Saturday  Review  in  the  pungency  of  its  tone  as  well  as  in  the 
excellence  of  its  literary  criticism.  It  was,  however,  no  mere  imitation,  either 
of  those  journals  or  of  any  other,  but  a  new  creation  which  brought  new 
elements  into  the  American  press."  ^ 

Since  1881,  The  Nation  has  been  owned  by  the  Evening  Post  of  New 
York.  Much,  but  by  no  means  all  of  its  contents,  appears  first  in  that  journal. 
The  Post  (and  The  Nation)  set  high  their  standards  of  political  conduct  and 
literary  merit.  Some  of  their  critics  thought  that  they  set  them  impossibly 
high,  and  that  what  their  editors  termed  idealism,  was  instead  a  supercilious 
and  contemptuous  attitude  toward  human  weakness  and  human  failings. 

From  the  start,  The  Nation  appealed  to  an  educated  audience.  Its  earliest 
friends  and  contributors  were  connected  with  the  colleges  and  universities; 
its  readers  to-day  are,  in  great  number,  members  of  the  faculties  of  these 
institutions.  As  a  result,  it  has  often  applied  to  it  the  term  "high-brow,"  —  a 
phrase  somewhat  impaired  in  usefulness  by  its  frequent  application  to  any 
journal  which  prefers  genuine  news  to  petty  gossip,  a  well-written  book  to  a 
"best-seller,"  and  grammatical  to  slipshod  English. 

The  Nation  has  kept  up  its  tradition,  not  only  as  a  foe  to  war,  but  as  a 
consistent  advocate  of  the  rights  of  the  so-called  inferior  races,  especially  the 
American  negroes.  The  latter  advocacy  would  be  a  natural  inheritance  from 
its  first  literary  editor,  Wendell  Phillips  Garrison,  as  well  as  from  abolitionists 
among  its  founders.  Its  high  literary  standards  came,  in  great  part,  from 
Mr.  Garrison.  It  has  opposed  a  protective  tariff,  urged  and  supported  reforms 
of  the  civil  service,  and  decried  inter-collegiate  athletics,  or  what  it  deemed  an 
over-development  of  them.  Its  views  on  sociological  and  fiscal  questions  are 
what  are  termed  "sound"  by  some,  and  conservative  by  others.  One  has,  in 
considering  book-reviews,  to  remember  the  principles  and  the  prejudices  of 
the  magazine  in  which  they  appear.  Reviewers  know,  or  soon  learn,  the 
traditions  of  a  publication,  and  even  their  minor  paragraphs  are  affected 
thereby. 


*  Quoted  in  "Fifty  Years  of  American  Idealism;  The  New  York  Nation,  1865-1915,"  by  Gustav  Pollak, 
—  a  volume  whose  title  illustrates  the  warmth  of  the  affection  bestowed  upon  The  Nation  by  its  contributors 
and  admirers,  as  well  as  the  reason  why  many  Americans  have  accused  it  of  self-conscious  rectitude. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  31 

Writers  are  inclined  to  think  of  The  Nation  as  the  Sir  Hubert  Stanley  of 
American  book-reviewing  publications,  —  its  approbation  is  praise  indeed. 
Some  writers  —  and  not  those  alone  who  have  been  slated  in  its  pages  — 
regard  it  with  dislike.  You  will  remember  the  punishment  reserved  for  the 
priggish  tutor  in  Mr.  Owen  Wister's  "Philosophy  4":  he  is  left  "writing  book- 
reviews  for  the  'New  York  Evening  Post.'  " 

Among  librarians  there  is  a  respect  for  The  Nation  which  sometimes 
borders  upon  reverence.  We  can  afford  to  smile  at  this  attitude,  but  any 
weekly  periodical,  of  high  standards,  discussing  as  The  Nation  does,  politics, 
science,  music  and  finance,  as  well  as  books,  old  and  new,  is  almost  indispens- 
able for  the  library.  It  devotes  a  large  amount  of  space  to  current  reviews. 
A  recent  number,  which  I  pick  up  at  random,  considers  twenty-one  books; 
and  many  weeks  the  number  would  be  much  larger  than  that.  Its  longer  re- 
views on  special  subjects,  such  as  books  about  the  fine  arts,  scientific  books, 
works  about  military  and  naval  science  (for  this  pacific  periodical  contains 
many  contributions  from  learned  officers  of  the  army  and  navy),  and  about 
government  and  sociology,  are  worthy  of  respect.  Its  shorter  reviews, 
especially  those  of  current  fiction,  are,  as  is  almost  invariably  the  case  with 
any  publication,  its  weakest  feature.  A  review  of  a  current  novel  is  frequently 
nothing  more  than  the  expression  of  personal  like  or  dislike,  and  when  a  re- 
viewer sits  down  to  write  for  The  Nation  his  opinion  upon  a  new  novel,  he  is 
inclined  to  err  upon  the  side  of  fault-finding,  as  in  another  periodical  he 
might  be  too  flattering.  * 


§4 

"The  Literary  History  of  America,"  by  Professor  Barrett  Wendell,  refers 
to  The  Dial,  in  Chicago,  as  a  paper  which  seems  at  present  the  "most  un- 
biassed, good  humored,  and  sensible  organ  of  American  criticism."  We  have 
no  weekly  devoted  solely  to  book-reviewing.  We  have  no  monthly  devoted 
entirely  to  it,  as  the  greater  part  of  The  Bookman  is  devoted  to  general  literary 
articles,  and  to  paragraphs  about  authors.  The  Dial,  which  appears  fort- 
nightly, is,  I  think,  the  only  publication  of  the  kind  in  the  United  States;  and 
it  has  been  pursuing  its  pleasant  and  dignified  career  for  about  thirty-six 
years,  most  of  the  time  under  the  editorship  of  the  late  Francis  F.  Browne. 
It  appears  to  be  conducted  on  the  theory  that  a  paper  may  avoid  being  fussy 
or  pedantic  and  still  not  be  deficient  in  scholarship,  and  that  it  may  dis- 


*  An  interesting  article  —  not  a  review  —  about  a  famous  book,  appeared  in  The  Nation  for  February  23, 
1905.  It  is  called  "The  Winner  in  the  Chariot  Race,"  and  it  is  typical  of  the  kind  of  literary  article  which 
is  exquisitely  pleasing  to  some  readers,  but  sure  to  give  pain  to  others. 


32  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

criminate  between  good  and  bad  literary  work  without  any  note  of  hostility 
or  ill  humor.  To  be  sure,  one  sometimes  misses  in  it  the  amusing  and  brilliant 
flashes  of  malice  which  enliven  other  periodicals,  and  although  it  never  sinks 
below  a  certain  level,  it  seldom  rises  far  above  it.  The  Dial  has  a  respectably 
high  average  which  it  strikes  year  in  and  year  out.  This  is  true  at  any  rate 
for  the  last  decade,  which  is  about  as  far  back  as  my  personal  experience  of  it 
goes. 

A  recent  number  contains  two  reviews  of  a  page  or  more  in  length,  three 
longer  articles  which  review  in  groups  a  number  of  books,  —  works  on  govern- 
ment, biography,  and  the  more  important  novels.  Eleven  other  new  books  are 
treated  more  briefly,  but  probably  adequately,  in  about  half  a  page  apiece. 
This  number  opened  with  two  general  articles  on  literary  subjects,  and 
four  pages  of  comment  upon  books  and  reading,  and  upon  libraries  and 
librarians.  (For  this  literary  magazine  gave  especial  recognition  to  librarians 
before  The  Athenaeum  did  so.)  It  closes  with  brief  notes  and  news,  and  a 
long  list  of  the  titles  of  recent  books.  This  was  a  smaller  number  of  The 
Dial,  not  one  of  the  special  issues  which  appear  in  the  height  of  the  publishing 
seasons.^ 


It  is  unnecessary  to  speak  at  length  of  The  Bookman  (New  York),  an 
illustrated  monthly  magazine  ''of  literature  and  life."  It  is  now  in  its  forty- 
fourth  volume,  and  like  all  magazines  has  varied  in  quality.  A  custom  which 
it  followed  for  a  number  of  years  was  to  group  some  of  the  novels  of  the 
month  in  one  article  and  review  them  under  such  a  heading  as  "The  Personal 
Equation,  and  Twelve  Novels  of  the  Month,"  or  "The  Note  of  Pessimism, 
and  the  Novels  of  the  Month."  This  style  of  book-reviewing  seems  always 
to  appeal  to  Feviewers  who  take  themselves  rather  seriously,  as  it  gives  a  touch 
of  scientific  literary  criticism  to  their  work.  It  often  helps  to  make  an  agree- 
able article  for  the  general  reader,  but  it  is  apt  to  be  confusing  to  librarians 
who  wish  specific  comment  upon  a  certain  book.  If  in  one  or  two  of  the 
novels  there  is  really  nothing  to  which  the  phrase  "the  personal  equation" 
especially  applies,  the  reviewer  must  needs  distort  that  novel  or  color  his 
review  of  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  seem  to  apply.  The  Bookman  has 
enlisted  the  services  of  many  competent  reviewers;  as  a  whole  it  is  always 
readable,  and  it  possesses  a  sense  of  humor. 


1  In  the  number  for  January  25,  1917,  it  is  announced  that  Mr.  George  Bernard  Donlin  is  to  be  the 
editor  of  The  Dial.  "It  will  try  to  meet  the  challenge  of  the  new  time  by  reflecting  and  interpreting  its 
spirit..."  —  whatever  that  means. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  33 

§6 

The  publications  which  we  are  considering  now  are  so  familiar  to  Ameri- 
can librarians  that  it  is  unnecessary,  if  not  impertinent,  to  dwell  long  upon 
them.  The  reputation  for  kindliness  in  the  reviews  published  in  the  Neiv 
York  Times  Book  Review  is  well  established  among  librarians.  The  excellence 
of  many  of  its  longer  reviews  is  also  a  point  to  be  remembered. 

There  are  probably  a  hundred  newspapers  in  the  United  States  which 
pay  more  or  less  attention  to  books,  and  a  few  of  them  include  surprisingly 
good  reviews.  Some  of  these  papers  can  command  the  services  of  intelligent 
book-reviewers.  An  author  is  always  pleased  when  a  review  indicates  that 
its  writer  has  read  the  book,  and  read  it  intelligently.  To  read  the  book  which 
one  is  about  to  review  is  not  always  the  custom.  Yet  when  it  is  followed,  the 
result  is  not  only  gratifying  to  the  author,  but  valuable  to  us  all.  In  the 
rush  and  hurry  of  the  offices  of  a  newspaper,  a  great  many  books  do  not 
get  read  at  all.  Either,  as  Mr.  Bliss  Perry  pointed  out,  the  reviewer  clips 
the  publisher's  notice,  or  he  takes  a  few  sentences  from  the  preface,  or 
he  glances  casually  into  the  book  and  jumps  to  a  hasty  conclusion.  The 
frequency  with  which  the  publisher's  notice  (that  paragraph  of  puffing  usually 
printed  on  the  jacket  of  a  book  and  known  as  the  "blurb"),  the  frequency  with 
which  this  is  repeated  in  newspaper  book-reviewing  is  almost  incredible.  I 
know  an  author  who  subscribed  to  a  press-clipping  bureau  and  read  the  hun- 
dred or  more  notices  which  were  sent  to  him  about  his  new  book.  Nearly 
twelve  months  later,  a  relative  of  this  author  wrote  to  him  that  she  had  heard 
of  a  complimentary  notice  which  had  appeared  about  his  book  and  about 
him  as  a  writer,  in  some  paper  in  Texas.  The  kind  relative  went  on  to  say 
that  she  had  not  yet  seen  the  notice,  but  had  only  heard  about  it  in  a  letter 
from  a  friend  in  the  city  where  it  was  first  printed.  The  friend  had  lent  it 
to  another  friend,  and  in  course  of  time  it  was  to  be  sent  to  the*  relative  who 
promised  to  forward  it  to  the  tremulous  and  expectant  author.  After  more 
or  less  correspondence  the  author  at  last  received  the  clipping,  which  was 
nearly  worn  out,  it  had  passed  through  so  many  hands.  It  was,  indeed, 
flattering  in  its  nature,  and  indicated  a  belief  that  the  reputation  of  such 
writers  as  Thackeray,  Dickens,  and  Howells  were  wavering  in  the  balance  on 
account  of  the  rise  of  this  new  and  extraordinarily  gifted  novelist.  The  author 
did  his  best  to  thank  his  friendly  correspondent,  and  he  refrained  from  saying 
that  the  delightful  nature  of  this  compliment  was  somewhat  impaired  for 
him  by  the  fact  that  he  had  already  read  the  same  praise,  uttered  verbatim  et 
literatim,  by  about  thirty-five  different  newspapers  from  Portland,  Maine,  to 


34  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

Santa  Barbara,  California,  and  that,  moreover,  the  whole  thing  originated  in 
the  puff,  by  means  of  which  the  publishers  of  the  book  were  doing  their 
best  to  increase  its  sale. 

In  spite  of  this  sort  of  thing,  there  is  occasionally  a  newspaper,  some- 
times of  the  most  unexpected  sort,  which  happens  to  have  upon  its  staff  a 
man  or  a  woman  who  is  writing  honest,  intelligent  and  witty  book-reviews. 
An  author  who  had  seen  many  reviews,  uniformly  favorable,  of  his 
books,  told  me  that  a  little  twenty-line  notice  in  a  rather  obscure  Yorkshire 
newspaper,  not  only  pleased  him  most,  but  seemed  to  show  more  intelligent 
appreciation  of  what  he  was  trying  to  say,  than  all  the  others.  Sometimes 
these  reviewers  are  doing  their  work  without  any  pay  except  the  practice  which 
it  gives  them,  the  pleasure  of  seeing  their  writing  in  print,  and  the  opportunity 
to  gain  the  editor's  notice,  and  so  merit,  in  the  future,  payment  in  money. 
Such  writers  of  reviews  are  frequently  not  hurried;  they  may  spend  a  week 
in  reading  a  single  book  and  in  writing  a  review  of  it,  and  the  work  is  often 
correspondingly  careful.  (An  experienced  hand,  of  course,  might  do  far 
better  in  a  few  hours.  The  plodding  nature  of  much  of  our  own  work  as 
librarians  may  make  us  exalt  the  plodder,  and  forget  that  brilliant  work  is 
frequently  done  at  high  speed.)  Sometimes  there  are  professional  men  or 
women  who  enjoy  dabbling  in  literary  work  in  their  odd  moments,  and  so  write 
reviews.  Certain  papers  and  periodicals  devoted  to  special  interests,  such  as, 
for  instance,  those  published  by  religious  sects,  often  contain  excellent  book- 
reviews.  All  of  these  are  interesting  and  valuable  to  ♦the  librarian,  if  they 
appear  in  time.    Unfortunately,  they  seldom  do  that. 

In  discussing  newspapers,  it  should  be  said  that  the  three  quoted  in  the 
Book  Reviezv  Digest,  are  the  "New  York  Times,  the  Springfield  Republican, 
and  the  Boston  Evening  Transcript. 


§7 

To  librarians  a  great  deal  need  not  be  said  about  the  little  publication 
to  which  the  American  Library  Association  chooses  to  give  the  cryptic  and 
unattractive  name  of  A.  L.  A.  Booklist.  It  is,  of  course,  aimed  especially  at 
the  small  libraries  which  can  afford  to  wait  until  the  Booklist  appears.  It  is 
undoubtedly  cautious  and  conservative  in  its  recommendations,  keeping  in 
mind  not  the  educated  person  of  mature  mind  and  catholic  taste,  but  rather 
the  provincial  type  of  library  patron  who  is  easily  shocked.^    If  any  of  us  ever 


1  While  this  is  in  press  a  librarian  writes  to  Public  Libraries  to  complain  that  the  A.  L.  A.  Booklist 
has  failed  in  its  duty,  —  it  did  not,  with  sufficient  severity,  condemn  a  recent  novel  by  Jack  London,  —  a 
book  apt,  thinks  this  librarian,  to  do  great  barm  to  young  people. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  35 

write  a  book,  we  may  feel  fairly  certain  that  out  of  a  feeling  of  fellowship 
for  us  as  librarians  the  A.  L.  A.  Booklist  will  duly  recommend  it,  showing 
that  however  stern  and  uncompromising  they  would  have  the  professional 
literary  critic,  when  it  comes  down  to  their  own  case  librarians  prefer  the  milk 
of  human  kindness  to  the  corrosive  acid  of  outspoken  criticism. 

Judging  from  the  current  number  (January,  1917),  the  phraseology  of 
the  annotations  in  the  Booklist  is  open  to  improvement.  One  does  not  demand 
graceful  writing  in  these  notes,  but  such  awkwardness  of  expression  as  to  leave 
the  meaning  in  doubt  certainly  impeaches  the  value  of  the  criticisms. 


§8 

There  are  innumerable  periodicals  of  a  general  nature,  wh'ch  contain 
book-reviews.  However  useful  they  may  prove,  from  time  to  time,  a  discus- 
sion of  them  is  superfluous  now.  No  library  subscribes  to  the  Outlook,  the 
Independent,  nor  the  Literary  Digest,  primarily  for  the  sake  of  its  book-re- 
views. The  reviews  in  The  New  Republic  are  especially  worth  attention  because 
in  it  we  have  not  only  an  ably  edited  paper,  but  one  with  different  opinions, 
different  sympathies,  from  those  of  the  other  weeklies.  On  a  question  of 
sociology,  of  economics,  or  of  politics,  The  Neiv  Republic  would  usually 
represent  the  opposite  opinion  from  The  Nation,  for  instance.  These  different 
opinions  are  reflected  in  the  reviews,  —  hence  the  value  of  both  periodicals  to 
the  librarian.  The  reviews  in  The  New  Republic  frequently  have  a  studied 
sophistication  which  makes  it  rather  a  task  to  consult  them. 


§9 

Not  the  least  among  the  minor  reviewing  publications  is  Life,  with  its 
brief,  but  often  witty  and  penetrating  comments  upon  books.  I  mention  it,  not 
so  much  for  the  purpose  of  recommending  it  to  you  in  this  connection,  as  to 
point  out  from  what  unorthodox  sources  many  of  the  readers  at  your  library 
get  their  impulses  to  read  this  or  that  book.  I  mean  that  while  few  librarians 
would  dream  of  speaking  of  Life  for  its  book-reviews,  some  of  them  would 
be  surprised  to  learn  of  its  influence  upon  the  reading  of  their  friends.  A 
little  investigation  will,  I  think,  show  you  that  a  great  number  of  intelligent 
men  and  women,  not  engaged  in  literary  or  scholastic  work,  never  see  —  and 
some  never  even  hear  of  —  the  standard  book-reviewing  publications.  If  they 
take  a  newspaper  which  publishes  reviews,  they  skip  that  page  as  regularly 
as  I  skip  the  court  record  or  the  real  estate  section.    But  I  believe  you  can  find, 


36  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

as  I  have  done,  university  men  who  invariably  read  the  comments  upon  books 
in  Life,  and  accept  their  advice.    It  is  usually  eminently  sensible  advice. 

For  your  own  pleasure,  and  as  the  one  touch  of  humor  in  this  entire  sub- 
ject, you  have  not  failed  to  read  the  "Rhymed  Reviews"  in  Life,  by  Arthur 
Guiterman.  They  are  now  suspended,  but  perhaps  only  temporarily.  At  a 
time  when  scores  of  lazy  persons  seek  the  title  of  "poet"  by  composing 
mechanical  imitations  of  vers  litres,  which  only  a  few  can  master,  Mr.  Guiter- 
man handles  unexpected  rhymes  and  difficult  metres  with  a  dexterity  second 
only  to  a  poet  like  Calverley.  His  comments  upon  current  books,  in  his  in- 
genious verse,  sometimes  appeal  to  you  because  of  their  whimsicality,  but  often 
because  in  them  he  has  said  merrily  what  another  reviewer  could  only  say 
heavily. 


§10 

It  is  impossible  for  the  small  library  to  subscribe  to  all  the  literary  re- 
views. It  is  often  impossible  for  the  librarian  to  read  all  to  which  there  is 
access.    Hence  the  convenience  of  some  sort  of  review  in  tabloid  form. 

The  Book  Review  Digest  supplies  this  compressed  form  of  book-review 
in  a  practical  fashion.  It  suffers  from  one  of  the  faults  of  the  reviews  them- 
selves, in  that  its  notices  often  appear  too  late  to  be  of  the  greatest  service  to 
the  librarian.  Indeed,  as  this  publication  has  to  wait  until  the  reviews  are 
published  before  it  can  go  to  press,  it  is  naturally  still  later  than  the  reviews. 
Its  system  of  indicating  the  favorable  or  unfavorable  nature  of  a  review  by 
a  plus  or  minus  sign  is  not  invariably  satisfactory,  as  I  have  known  an  ironical 
review  to  be  misunderstood  by  the  person  who  made  the  digest  of  it,  and 
marked  with  a  plus  sign,  when  the  reviewer  meant  something  quite  different. 
It  is  not  always  possible  to  get  the  meaning  of  a  review,  which  may  be  eleven 
or  twelve  hundred  words  in  length,  into  a  summary  of  eight  or  ten  lines,  any 
more  than  it  is  possible  to  have  a  genuine  knowledge  of  a  book  merely  by 
reading  a  review  of  it.  The  Book  Review  Digest  reflects,  of  course,  and  in 
some  respects  accentuates  the  faults  of  the  book-reviews.  Like  the  reviews  it 
is  a  good  thing  for  a  librarian  to  call  upon  for  help,  but  a  bad  one  upon  which 
to  rely  absolutely.  It  would  be  safe,  I  think,  to  name  The  Book  Review  Digest 
as  one  of  the  four  or  five  most  desirable  publications  to  help  in  the  selection  of 
books.  But  that  would  be  bad  advice  unless  coupled  with  a  warning  not  to 
depend  too  much  upon  digests,  excerpts,  extracts,  and  machinery,  thereby 
neglecting  the  few  opportunities  a  librarian  has  of  reading  books,  and  forming 
opinions  about  them. 


BOOK-REVIEWS  37 

IV 

§1 

In  the  last  of  these  talks  it  may  be  useful  to  consider  the  various  kinds 
of  book-reviews,  and  try  to  discover  which  of  these  we  are  most  likely  to 
need.  We  talk  glibly,  says  Mr.  Bliss  Perry,  in  our  academic  class-rooms 
about  various  types  of  literary  criticism:  "the  judicial,  the  interpretative,  the 
appreciative,  the  impressionistic,  and  so  on.  It  is  evident  that  these  types 
or  species  of  book-reviews  exist  and  co-exist,  and  that  they  are  found  not 
merely  in  the  periodical  literature  of  our  own  country,  but  in  all  civilized  coun- 
tries, and  that  the  processes  indicated  by  the  words  'judicial,'  'interpretative,' 
'impressionistic'  may  be  traced  not  only  in  the  work  of  any  one  critic,  but  even 
in  successive  pages  of  the  same  critical  essay." 

Another  classification  of  book-reviews,  one  suggested  to  me  by  Miss 
Mary  W.  Plummer,  is:  the  informational  review,  the  non-committal,  the  per- 
functory, and  the  critical.  The  perfunctory  book-review  is  one  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned  in  connection  with  much  of  the  book-reviewing  done  in 
newspapers.  The  person  entrusted  with  the  work  of  reviewing  books  is  ap- 
parently the  office  boy,  who,  equipped  with  a  pair  of  scissors  and  a  jar  of 
paste,  clips  out  the  publisher's  notice  of  the  book,  perhaps  taking  it  from  the 
little  printed  advertising  leaflet  which  accompanies  the  copy  sent  for  review, 
and  sends  it,  just  as  it  stands,  to  the  composing  room. 

And  thus  it  often  happens  that  when  a  novel  is  published,  fifty  or  a 
hundred  newspapers  scattered  across  the  country,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific,  solemnly  record  that  Mr.  or  Mrs.  Blank's  novel  is  a  heart-gripping 
work,  a  book  filled  from  cover  to  cover  with  human  interest,  pulsating  with 
good  red  blood,  strong,  virile,  compelling,  and  convincing.  (That  word  "con- 
vincing" is  their  pet  and  their  darling.)  Its  hero,  Roderick  Livingstone, 
is  a  fine  type  of  clean-limbed  young  American  manhood,  while  the  heroine, 
the  delightful  Betty  Fairfax,  is  a  most  charming  and  winsome  speci- 
men of  the  American  girl  in  full  flower  of  her  charm.  Those  who  have  read 
Mr.  or  Mrs.  Blank's  novel  feel  that  a  new  star  has  risen  on  the  literary  horizon, 
and  that  by  this  work  Mr.  or  Mrs.  Blank  takes  his  or  her  rightful  place  with 
the  imperishable  masters  of  English  fiction.  The  new  book  combines  the 
dramatic  power  of  Dumas,  the  humor  of  Dickens,  the  keen  insight  of  Balzac, 

and  the  wit  and  irony  of  Thackeray.    The  charming  illustrations  are  by 

:  $1.25  at  all  bookstores. 


38  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

§2 

The  non-committal  type  of  book-review  may  be  written  by  someone 
who  has  not  really  read  the  book.  Sometimes,  however,  it  is  a  part  of  a  set 
policy  of  the  publication  to  play  safe  and  offend  no  one.  Each  new  book  is, 
therefore,  credited  with  a  notice,  which,  although  really  written  in  the  office 
from  which  it  emanates,  is  so  neutral  in  tone  that  it  might  apply  equally  well 
to  the  "Decameron"  or  to  "Rollo  at  Play."  Except  for  the  fact  that  the  non- 
committal book-review  will  as  a  rule  tell  you  whether  the  book  is  one  of 
history,  biography,  or  whatever,  it  is  almost  wholly  useless. 

§3 

The  informational  type  of  book-review  gives  its  reader  a  fair  idea  about 
the  contents  of  the  book  without  going  far  into  real  criticism.  Often  this  is 
a  useful  type.  The  review  may  consist  chiefly  of  quotations  from  the  book, 
and  in  some  classes  of  literature  there  can  be  nothing  better  than  that.  A  re- 
view of  a  volume  of  poems,  for  instance,  which  does  not  quote  as  extensively  as 
space  allows,  has  certainly  failed  to  do  its  duty.  There  are  other  kinds  of 
books  from  which  quotations,  if  well  chosen,  will  tell  the  reader  of  the  review 
more  than  any  amount  of  criticism,  no  matter  how  clever  the  criticism.  Mr. 
Frank  B.  Sanborn,  who  has  for  many  years  written  literary  and  other  letters 
to  the  Springfield  Republican  has  said  that  copious  quotations  from  a  book 
give  it  the  best  kind  of  review. 


In  the  genuine  critical  book-review  the  art  of  reviewing  reaches  its  high- 
est level.  The  reviewer  who  is  well  enough  informed  to  appraise  a  book 
fairly,  to  point  out  with  justice  its  strong  and  its  weak  sides,  to  assign  with 
some  degree  of  accuracy  its  real  importance,  and  to  do  all  this  in  clear  terms 
and  briefly,  produces  the  kind  of  review  for  which  the  librarian,  at  any  rate, 
is  seeking.  To  do  this,  the  reviewer  must  possess  that  amount  of  knowledge 
of  general  literature  which  gives  him  a  sense  of  proportion.  The  writer  of 
some  of  Baedeker's  guidebooks  declares  that  a  man  must  know  something  of 
the  whole  world  to  write  a  good  guidebook  of  any  one  country.  It  will  not 
do,  he  says,  for  the  writer  to  become  over-awed  about  the  low  range  of  sand 
hills  which  form  the  highest  points  of  land  in  Holland,  so  long  as  the  Alps 
and  the  Rocky  Mountains  are  in  existence.     In  the  same  way  the  book-re- 


BOOK-REVIEWS  39 

viewer  must  curb  his  enthusiasm  for  the  latest  volume  of  plays  until  he  con- 
siders them  against  the  background  of  the  great  dramatists  of  the  English 
stage.  This  does  not  mean,  however,  —  and  it  is  important  for  the  reviewer 
of  books  to  remember  that  it  does  not  mean  —  that  all  current  books  should 
be  contrasted  with  the  monuments  of  literature,  and  condemned  because 
they  do  not  reach  an  equal  height.  If  librarians  should  reject  every  novel 
that  comes  along  until  they  find  one  as  good  as  "The  Tale  of  Two  Cities," 
they  would  not  only  go  without  buying  any  new  fiction  for  a  great  many  ^ 
years,  but  they  would  also  miss  an  amount  of  good  work. 

The  author's  profession  is  peculiar;  he  is  one  of  the  few  people  who  suffer 
from  the  competition  —  literally  the  competition,  commercial  and  otherwise 
—  of  the  dead.  There  can  always  be  found  persons  who  like  to  shake  their 
heads  and  exclaim  mournfully,  "The  days  of  the  great  novelists  or  poets  are 
past.  We  shall  have  no  more  Scotts,  Dickenses,  nor  Thackerays;  no  more 
Byrons,  Words  worths,  nor  Tennysons."  This  may  be  true,  but  it  is  also  true 
that  in  the  days  of  those  great  novelists,  the  critics  and  other  despondent 
persons  would  shake  their  heads  and  Say,  "Do  not  talk  to  me  about  Scott, 
Thackeray,  and  this  Charles  Dickens,  —  the  days  of  the  great  novelists  are 
past.  Where  is  there  to-day  anyone  to  compare  with  Richardson,  Fielding 
and  Smollett?"  And  in  the  days  of  Richardson,  Fielding,  and  Smollett,  I 
do  not  know  to  whom  the  melancholy  critics  harked  back,  but  I  am  sure  that 
they  spoke  regretfully  of  some  writers  of  past  glory,  whose  equals  would 
never  be  seen  again, ^ 

In  the  essay,  already  quoted,  on  "Literary  Criticism  and  Book  Review- 
ing," Mr.  Brander  Matthews  writes:  "The  aristocrats  of  culture  put  their 
trust  in  academic  standards,  as  becomes  the  custodians  of  tradition.  They 
look  to  the  past  only;  they  rarely  understand  the  present;  they  are  prone  to 
distrust  the  future.  They  did  not  perceive  the  scope  of  'Don  Quixote,'  of 
'Hamlet,'  of  the  'Cid,'  and  of  the  'Femmes  Savantes.'  They  were  outraged 
by  Hugo's  'Hernani'  as  they  were  disgusted  with  Ibsen's  'Ghosts.'  They  are 
rarely  open-minded  enough  to  disentangle  what  is  praiseworthy  out  of  the 
powerful  works  which  revolt  them  —  Zola's,  for  example,  and  Whitman's. 
But  it  is  only  fair  to  suggest  that  they  are  swift  to  belaud  delicate  art  and 
technical  skill.  They  found  it  easy  to  appreciate  Virgil  and  Racine,  Gray  and 
Longfellow,  and  in  general  any  other  poet  who  has  felt  himself  to  be  the  heir 
of  the  ages  and  who  has  walked  reverently  in  the  footprints  of  his  predecessors. 
They  are,  therefore,  more  likely  to  be  right  in  their  opinions  on  authors  of  the 


'  For  instance,  Joseph  Green  Cogswell,  first  superintendent  of  the  Astor  Library,  a  man  of  culture 
and  wide  education,  wrote  to  Ticknor  in  1854,  regretting  that  the  "young  fry"  who  came  to  the  Library  spent 
their  time  "reading  the  trashy,  as  Scott,  Cooper,  Dickens..." 


40  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

second  rank  than  in  their  judgments  upon  original  geniuses.  In  this  latter  task 
their  very  education  seems  often  to  be  a  disadvantage,  sophisticating  their 
perceptions  and  leaving  them  less  ready  to  understand  the  elemental  and  the 
universal  than  the  plain  people  are.  It  may  even  lead  them  to  distrust  a 
writer  of  primitive  force,  chiefly  because  the  plain  people  like  him. 

"The  book-reviewers  are  wise  in  rejecting  the  advice  of  the  strenuous 
writers  quoted  early  in  this  paper  and  in  not  being  tempted  to  take  themselves 
too  seriously.  It  is  enough  to  give  them  pause  to  recall  the  fate  of  more  than 
one  of  their  predecessors  and  to  remember  that  when  a  book-reviewer  de- 
cides that  it  is  his  duty  to  scourge  the  incompetent  and  to  drive  out  the  false 
pretenders,  he  may  be  clever  enough  to  select  Robert  Montgomery  as  his  vic- 
tim, or  he  may  be  unlucky  enough  to  happen  upon  Byron  or  Keats  or  Words- 
worth." 


In  speaking  of  the  critical  book-review,  we  must  recognize  the  different 
standards  of  criticism  for  different  classes  of  books.  In  mathematics,  and 
in  many  of  the  more  or  less  exact  sciences,  accuracy  is,  of  course,  the  first 
requisite.  The  book  cannot  adequately  be  reviewed  except  by  a  specialist  in 
that  branch  of  learning.  In  the  same  way,  while  a  person  of  good  general 
information  may  review  a  book  on,  let  us  say,  Greek  sculpture  or  Italian  opera, 
and  produce  a  fair  book-review  which  describes  the  scope  of  the  work,  of 
course  only  an  expert  is  prepared  to  give  anything  like  a  definite  judgment 
upon  it.  That  is  why  I  have  spoken  so  much  about  longer  reviews  and  pref- 
erably the  signed  reviews  in  such  publications  as  The  Nation  and  The  Dial. 
The  editor  of  the  book-reviewing  publication  does  not  turn  over  important 
books  to  the  people  who  write  the  brief  notes  and  paragraphs.  The  men  or 
women  who  are  qualified  to  review  a  book  on  government,  or  the  fine  arts,  or 
philosophy,  are  usually  able  to  command  a  fee  for  doing  the  work.  They  ex- 
pect a  certain  amount  of  space,  and  they  are  accustomed  to  sign  their  names  to 
the  review. 

Even  then,  while  the  librarian  may  accept  these  judgments  as  the  best 
at  that  time,  and  buy  the  book  on  the  recommendation,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  greatest  experts  often  go  sadly  astray,  or  are  themselves  condemned 
and  ridiculed  by  the  experts  of  the  next  decade  or  generation.  Even  in  the 
field  of  science,  that  domain  of  "exact"  knowledge,  the  discoverers  and 
pioneers  are  often  hooted  down  by  the  orthodox  critics  of  their  day. 

The  ideal  writer  of  a  book-review -is-a.  person  who  combines  knowledge 
of  his  suljject,  with  sympathy,  tolerance,  and  humanity^    He  sees  mistakes 


BOOK-REVIEWS  41 

and  errors,  if  they  exist,  but  he  does  not  allow  them  to  blind  him  to  posi- 
tive merits.  Certain  experts,  sometimes  employed  to  review  books,  think  that 
the  art  of  criticism  consists  in  tracking  down  minute,  unimportant  blunders. 
They  run  over  the  pages,  hunting  for  some  trifling  inaccuracy  or  typographical 
mistake,  and  are  triumphant  when  they  find  one.  It  is  well  for  the  author's 
sake,  as  well  as  for  that  of  the  reader,  that  errors  should  be  detected  and,  if 
possible,  corrected  in  a  future  edition.  It  is  certainly  desirable  that  any  im- 
portant errors,  tending  to  misinform  the  reader  of  the  book,  should  be  noted  in 
a  review  of  it.  It  may  be  well  to  chronicle  even  small  mistakes.  But  it  is  a 
question,  if  the  critic's  motive  is  purely  altruistic  and  he  is  merely  animated 
by  a  passion  for  accuracy,  whether  he  should  not  bring  about  his  laudable 
purpose  by  a  brief  letter  to  the  publisher  or  author,  who  will  be  duly  grateful. 
The  reader  of  a  book-review  has  seldom  time  to  learn,  nor  does  he  care  to 
learn,  that  there  is  a  trifling  mistake,  say,  in  the  pagination  of  the  index,  or 
that  the  middle  initial  of  some  obscure  and  unimportant  person  —  to  whom 
the  only  reference  in  the  whole  volume  is  made  in  a  footnote  —  is  given  as 
"E"  when  it  should  be  "A".  Yet  there  are  people  who  seem  to  think  that  in 
recording  such  things  they  are  displaying  their  scholarship,  when  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  they  are  merely  advertising  their  lack  of  it.  I  have  heard  learned  men 
chanting,  in  a  kind  of  barbaric  glee,  the  fact  that  they  had  discovered  in  some 
colleague's  book  an  error  in  a  date,  and  one  doubtful  statement. 

It  is  unwise  to  be  too  fond  of  exposing  the  minor  inaccuracies  of  other 
folk.  The  chances  are  many  that  just  as,  with  a  triumphant  chuckle,  we  in- 
dulge ourselves  in  the  pastime,  we  may  fall  into  some  blunder  as  bad  as  the 
one  about  which  we  are  complaining.  In  a  brief  review,  which  I  once  read, 
the  reviewer  recorded  two  or  three  small  errors  he  had  found.  One  of  his 
discoveries  was  that  the  author  had  spoken  of  the  right-hand  page  of  a  book 
as  having  an  even  number,  when,  really,  that  page  in  book-making  is  always 
given  an  odd  number.  As  the  book  under  discussion  was  wholly  imaginary, 
the  error  might  have  seemed  rather  small  to  record,  —  especially,  as  only  a 
few  lines  above,  this  meticulous  reviewer  had  mis-spelled  the  name  of  the 
author  whose  carelessness  he  was  reproving ! 


§6 

The  reviewer,  then,  has  a  right  to  demand  absolute  accuracy  in  scientific 
works,  knowledge  of  the  subject  in  all  books,  and  a  readable  quality  in  every 
book,  except  a  reference  book.  I  am  not  sure  that  even  that  should  be  ex- 
cepted.   Books  are  made  to  be  read,  even  though  some  people  dislike  to  admit 


42  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

it !  The  precise  scholar  is  apt  to  look  with  distrust  upon  any  book  which  is  easy 
to  read.  I  heard  a  conversation  not  long  ago  between  a  historical  scholar  and 
another  man,  in  which  the  historian  was  inclined  to  laugh  at  the  writings  of 
Francis  Parkman  because  they  are  readable  and  because  they  attempt  to  con- 
vey something  of  the  romance  which  surrounded  the  early  exploration  of 
North  America.  He  seemed  to  have  in  mind  some  special  passage  in  which 
Parkman  spoke  of  travellers  near  the  St.  Lawrence  River,  passing  through 
woods  by  moonlight.  Inasmuch  as  moonlight  is  more  or  less  inseparably  con- 
nected with  romance,  it  annoyed  him  to  have  anything  said  about  it  at  all;  and 
he  seemed  to  believe  that  Parkman  should  have  suppressed  all  mention  of  the 
moon,  or,  if  he  felt  bound  to  bring  it  in,  should  have  procured  an  almanac,  to 
"find  out  moonshine,"  and  should  have  limited  his  description  to  a  statistical 
table,  giving  the  hours  of  the  moon's  rising  and  setting  during  this  expedition. 
The  other  man  agreed  that  it  would  be  wrong  for  the  historian  to  represent 
the  moon  as  shining  on  any  specific  night,  unless  he  had  documentary  evi- 
dence; but  inasmuch  as  this  expedition  lasted  for  several  months,  he  went 
on  to  say,  it  seemed  reasonable  to  suppose  that  some  time  during  those  months 
the  moon  was  really  visible;  and  as  it  was  known  that  the  travellers  did  march 
by  night,  a  reference  to  the  theory  of  probabilities  might  seem  to  bear  out, 
almost  mathematically,  Parkman's  statement  that  on  one  night,  at  any  rate, 
they  marched  by  moonlight  through  the  woods.  Moreover,  he  maintained, 
it  was  not  only  justifiable  but  thoroughly  commendable  to  try  to  fix  in  the 
minds  of  readers  the  events  of  those  days,  by  describing  the  long  line  of 
French  explorers,  headed  by  their  Indian  scouts,  proceeding  through  the  forest 
by  moonlight.  By  such  a  method  he  attained  a  degree  of  historical  truth  far 
above  any  astronomical  hair-splittings. 

But,  no;  it  would  not  satisfy  the  historian.  There  were  no  living  wit- 
nesses of  that  moonlight;  there  was  not  even  a  sworn  affidavit  about  it;  and 
so,  while  he  was  not  quite  ready  to  cast  Parkman  out  from  the  accepted  band 
of  historians,  he  felt  that  he  was  still  more  or  less  an  object  of  suspicion.  Thus 
does  scientific  criticism  make  itself  ridiculous  when  it  ventures  out  of  the 
fields  in  which  exact  knowledge  is  possible. 


§7 

In  all  books,  the  critic  has  the  right  to  demand  good  English;  clear  Eng- 
lish at  any  rate,  grammatical  English  in  all  books,  and  choice  English  in  works 
which  pretend  to  belong  to  the  belles  lettres.  Here  again,  it  is  possible  to  be 
fussy  and  pedantic;  for  over-exacting  schoolmasters  and  grammarians  can 


BOOK-REVIEWS  43 

search  the  works  of  the  best  writers  and  come  away  with  a  fine  crop  of  blun- 
ders of  every  kind.  I  suppose  that  the  split  infinitive  has  been  the  mistake 
most  widely  discussed  by  those  who  put  an  undue  amount  of  trust  in  books  of 
rules,  and  by  those  who  think  that  culture  may  be  acquired  by  obeying  certain 
prohibitions.  Certainly  many  persons  and  many  writers  of  book-reviews 
take  great  joy  in  discovering  split  infinitives,  just  as  our  teachers  at  school 
used  to  search  them  out  in  our  themes  and  compositions.  It  is  wrong  to 
split  an  infinitive  —  besides,  as  someone  said,  being  cruel  to  the  infinitive  — 
but  it  is  foolish  to  set  up  that,  or  any  other  mistake,  as  the  touchstone  of  good 
usage.  Not  only  does  the  split  infinitive  occur  over  and  over  again  in  the 
writings  of  lesser  authors,  but  it  may  be  found  in  the  works  of  such  masters 
of  style  and  expert  literary  craftsmen  as  Matthew  Arnold,  Walter  Pater,  and 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  This  is  only  one  example  of  the  sort  of  error  upon 
which  the  hypercritical  book-reviewer  may  waste  his  time. 

In  an  article  on  "Book  Reviewing"  ^  Mr.  Robert  Lynd  has  said:  "Those 
to  whom  popular  books  are  anathema  have  a  temperament  which  will  always 
find  it  difficult  to  fall  in  with  the  limitations  of  the  work  of  a  general  re- 
viewer. The  curious  thing  is  that  this  intolerance  of  easy  writing  is  most 
generally  found  among  those  who  are  most  opposed  to  intolerance  in  the 
sphere  of  morals.  It  is  as  though  they  had  escaped  from  one  sort  of  Puri- 
tanism into  another.  Personally,  I  do  not  see  why,  if  we  should  be  tolerant 
of  the  breach  of  a  moral  commandment,  we  should  not  be  equally  tolerant 
of  the  breach  of  a  literary  commandment.  We  should  gently  scan  not  only 
our  brother  man  but  our  brother  author.  The  ultra-artistic  person  of  to-day, 
however,  will  look  kindly  on  adultery,  but  show  all  the  harshness  of  a  Pil- 
grim Father  in  his  condemnation  of  a  split  infinitive.  I  cannot  see  the  logic 
of  this.  If  irregular  and  commonplace  people  have  the  right  to  exist,  surely 
irregular  and  commonplace  books  have  a  right  to  exist  by  their  side." 


§8 

It  is  scarcely  worth  while  to  spend  time  in  reading  the  book-review  which 
is  written  not  so  much  for  the  purpose  of  informing  its  reader  as  to  give  its 
writer  the  opportunity  to  cultivate  an  involved  and  tortuous  style.  Such  re- 
views are  not  infrequent;  they  are  the  products  of  a  sophomoric  period  of  de- 
velopment continued  in  maturer  years.  One  of  the  recent  editors  of  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  said  that  the  chief  difficulty  with  manuscripts  submitted  by 
young  writers  —  especially  those  at  the  college  age  —  was  not  simplicity,  but 


» In  Tht  British  Review,  April,  1915. 


44  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

the  lack  of  it,  —  the  belief  that  wandering  in  obscure  mazes  of  thought,  and 
expressing  oneself  in  mystic  phrases  meant  profundity.  Thus  the  German 
commentators  upon  Shakespeare  read  into  the  text  metaphysical  subtleties 
never  dreamed  of  by  the  dramatist;  and  in  like  manner  the  Browning  Society 
made  new  difficulties  with  their  poet's  works,  until  Browning  himself,  when 
asked  to  explain  a  line,  used  to  laugh,  and  say  "I'm  sure  I  don't  know;  ask  the 
Browning  Society."  The  peculiar  style  of  Henry  James  was  a  genuine  re- 
flection of  his  mind;  his  imitators  merely  achieve  his  obscurity  without  the 
delicate  power  of  analysis  which  lay  behind  it.  A  small  mind  may  for  a 
time  look  great  by  getting  itself  into  a  fog,  but  the  illusion  does  not  last. 


§9 

Writers  of  reviews  sometimes  blame  a  book  for  not  possessing  qualities 
which  it  never  was  intended  to  possess.  They  form  an  idea  of  the  purpose 
which  the  author  ought  to  have  had,  or  of  the  manner  in  which  the  book 
should  have  been  written.  It  does  not  occur  to  them  to  ask  whether  the 
author's  purpose  and  manner  may  not  be  as  good  as  their  own.  Because  he 
did  not  think  with  them,  they  condemn  him  and  his  book. 

Persistently  to  find  defects  does  not  indicate  intellectual  distinction.  To 
be  the  one  dissenting  voice  in  a  chorus  of  praise  assures  attention,  and  the 
temptation  to  attract  such  attention  is,  to  a  few  persons,  irresistible.  From 
a  recent  review,  on  Ian  Hay's  (Captain  Beith's)  "The  First  Hundred 
Thousand,"  the  following  sentences  are  quoted: 

"What  strikes  a  reader  who  knows  nothing  of  war  is  the  bright  ama- 
teurishness of  it  all.  In  a  way  one  admires  this  tremendously.  Soulful  talks 
would  be  trying. .  .  But  war,  after  all,  is  war.  It  is  not  a  game  or  a  sport. 
And  Captain  Beith's  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  the  British  public  school  with  a 
strong  suggestion  of  Punch .  .  .  But  to  go  from  the  playground  to  the  battle- 
field in  the  very  spirit  of  the  playground  suggests  a  lack  of  imagination. 
And  this  lack  of  imagination  sticks  out  all  over  this  volume,  ,  .  However  one 
may  feel  about  the  Germans,  one  may  be  sure  they  do  not  take  their  work  in 
this  spirit.  .  .  Perhaps  the  class  humor  with  which  the  recruits  are  described 
.  .  .  has  something  to  do  with  a  sense  that  Captain  Beith  has  not  quite  clinched 
with  the  difficult  task  of  describing  the  war.  .  .  That  he  and  his  regiment 
were  gloriously  gallant  one  is  warmly  conscious.  If  one  is  disappointed  it  is 
mainly  because  their  deeper  emotions  are  not  presented  with  success.  One 
does  not  doubt  for  a  second  the  sportsmanlike  attitude  of  these  men.  One 
only  doubts  their  willingness  to  accept  the  psychic  as  well  as  the  physical  clash 


BOOK-REVIEWS  45 

of  the  war. . .  But  pleasant  though  Captain  Beith's  narrative  is,  it  does  not 
convey  a  fine  total  sense  of  his  adventure,  his  army  and  his  empire.  It  has 
for  a  grave  event  a  too-familiar  imperturbability,  an  air  of  preserving  style 
at  the  expense  of  sincere  response ..." 


§10 

Reviews  of  this  kind  are  fashionable  to-day.  Their  manner  of  courteous 
superiority  sometimes  makes  the  reader  exclaim:  "Here,  at  last,  is  real 
criticism!"  Yet  the  reviewer's  phrase:  "an  air  of  preserving  style  at  the 
expense  of  sincere  response,"  is  applicable  to  his  own  work.  You  cannot 
escape  the  feeling  that  this  polite  fault-finding  is  done  for  the  sake  of  fault- 
finding, and  that  if  Captain  Beith  had  indulged  in  the  least  emotionalism  this 
reviewer  would  have  denounced  him  more  cuttingly  than  he  does  for  its 
lack.  In  other  words,  his  mental  attitude  is  as  if  he  had  said:  "Here  is  a 
well-liked,  straightforward,  and  occasionally  humorous  narrative,  —  I  must 
delicately,  very  delicately,  point  out  its  defects.  I  can  find  these  defects  with- 
out difficulty  by  imagining  what  my  mental  attitude  would  have  been  in 
similar  circumstances,  and  regretting  that  the  author's  experiences  were 
different." 

Why  shoiiW  this  reviewer  have  thought  that  the  author  desired  to  "clinch" 
with  "the  difficult  task  of  describing  the  war"?  It  is  clear  that  Captain  Beith 
had  no  such  intention.  Suppose  that  the  narrative  does  not  "convey  a  fine 
total  sense  of  his  adventure,  his  army  and  his  empire"  —  what  then?  In  fifty 
years  l^q.  novelist,  no  historian  even,  has  conveyed  "a  fine  total  sense"  of  our 
Civil  War.  How  can  a  reviewer  demand  such  an  achievement  from  an  author 
actually  writing  at  the  front  ? 

Surely,  to  lament  because  Captain  Beith's  Scotch  soldiers  lacked  the 
"willingness  to  accept  the  psychic. .  .clash  of  the  war"  is  rather  absurd  and 
recalls  Reginald  Bunthorne. 


§11 

What  does  the  general  reader  think  of  book-reviews?  How  much  does 
he  use  them,  and  what  importance  does  he  attach  to  them?  If  you  have  not 
already  discovered,  you  can  easily  find  out  that  only  a  small  percentage  of 
the  public  read  book-reviews  at  all.  Should  you  inquire  among  fairly  well- 
informed  people,  those  who  are  moderately  interested  in  books  and  read- 
ing, I  think  you  will  be  astonished  to  learn  how  many  of  them  never  read 


46  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

a  book-review,  and  do  not  even  know  the  names  of  such  pubhcations  as 
The  Athendeiirn,  The  Nation,  and  The  Dial.  The  average  person  who  reads 
a  few  books,  reads  little  or  nothing  about  them  except  what  he  sees  in  the 
advertisements.  If  a  review  is  quoted  in  an  advertisement  it  may  catch  his 
eye.  Forty  reviewers  may  have  condemned  the  book,  three  may  have  said 
one  or  two  good  words  for  it  in  the  course  of  an  otherwise  unfavorable  notice. 
The  publisher  naturally  quotes  the  favorable  lines  from  the  three  merciful 
critics,  combines  these  as  an  advertisement,  and  the  person  who  goes  no  farther 
than  that  gets  the  impression  that  the  new  book  is  entirely  praiseworthy. 

§  12 

What  do  publishers  think  of  book-reviews?  It  is  said  that  some  of  them 
do  not  much  care  whether  their  books  are  reviewed  or  not,  and  that  so  far 
as  they  are  concerned  would  gladly  save  the  cost  of  the  hundred  or  two 
hundred  copies  which  are  sent  to  the  literary  editors.  It  is  hard,  however,  to 
break  away  from  old  custom,  and,  moreover,  the  publisher  well  knows  that 
it  tickles  the  author's  vanity  to  read  the  reviews,  and  that  it  may  put  him  in 
an  amiable  frame  of  mind  to  receive  the  news  of  slender  sales.  The  author, 
at  least  at  the  time  of  the  publication  of  his  or  her  first  book,  is  frankly 
delighted  to  receive  the  reviews,  and  treasures  any  kind  words  which  may  have 
been  said,  even  by  the  most  obscure  paper. 

"  'Tis  pleasant,  sure,  to  see  one's  name  in  print; 
A  book's  a  book,  although  there's  nothing  in't," 

seems  to  be  as  true  to-day  as  it  ever  was,  although  now  that  there  is  an  author 
in  every  family  the  joy  might  be  expected  to  have  worn  off  a  little.  But  I 
do  not  know,  I  met  a  gentleman  last  winter  who,  at  the  age  of  seventy  or  over, 
had  written  his  first  book,  a  volume  of  reminiscences.  He  had  already  had 
a  successful  career,  not  without  some  marks  of  distinction  in  his  own  pro- 
fession, but  the  generally  kind  and  complimentary  notices  which  his  book  was 
receiving  had  reduced  him  to  a  state  of  almost  speechless  delight.  Not  in- 
frequently authors  who  have  been  pleasantly  treated  feel  called  upon  to  write 
to  the.  reviewer  and  thank  him,  although  I  believe  that  Dr.  Johnson  said  that 
was  a  foolish  thing  to  do,  because  if  a  critic  had  blamed  your  book,  there  was 
nothing  for  you  to  say,  while  if  he  praised  it  and  his  praise  was  deserved,  he  had 
only  performed  his  duty,  and  needed  no  thanks. 

The  instances  in  which  an  author  has  taken  adverse  criticism  to  heart, 
accepted  it  as  just,  and  been  guided  by  its  advice,  are,  I  should  imagine,  very 


BOOK-REVIEWS  47 

rare.  Richard  Grant  Moulton  declared  that  the  history  of  literature  was  the 
history  of  the  triumph  of  authors  over  critics;  and  Christopher  North,  him- 
self a  famous  critic,  declared,  "I  care  not  one  single  curse  for  all  the  criticism 
that  was  ever  canted  or  decanted."  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  said  that  the  only 
kind  of  literary  criticism  which  amounts  to  much  is  that  of  a  boy  who,  in 
genuine  indignation  or  enthusiasm,  finishes  a  book  with  the  word  "Rubbish!" 
or  with  the  word  "Bully!"  I  know  of  an  author  who  found  in  a  book-review 
the  adverse  opinions  with  which  he  himself  had  come  to  regard  his  own  work. 
He  was  interested  enough  to  inquire  the  name  of  the  writer  of  the  review 
and  to  send  him  a  letter,  substantially  as  follows: 

"My  dear  Sir:  Somewhat  recently  a  clipping  from  the  of  De- 
cember 20th  was  sent  me.  It  interested  me  very  much,  made  me  mad  (with 
myself)  and  did  me  much  good.  I  have  learned  that  you  are  the  author  of 
this  criticism  and  wish  to  thank  you  for  pitching  into  me.  Your  compliments 
on  my  earlier  book,  of  course,  made  me  blush,  but  the  direction  of  your 
criticism  on  the  latter  was  right  in  line  with  what  I  have  been  feeling  for 
years,  and  you  gave  me  the  fillip  necessary  to  decide  me  to  call  a  halt  on  books 
of  the  kind  I  have  been  rnaking  recently  and  endeavor  to  go  back  to  the  thing 
I  like  best.  It  will  interest  you,  I  hope,  to  know  that  I  am  going  to  bring 
out,  next  fall,  a  book  in  the  manner  of  my  original  venture." 

Moreover,  the  author  kept  his  word,  and  the  book  duly  appeared.  Such 
instances  as  this  are  probably  rather  rare  and  form  a  pleasant  contrast  to 
wliat  is  a  more  frequent  experience  of  book-reviewers,  —  to  have  an  author 
pass  over  forty  lines  of  praise,  remember  only  one  or  two  lines  of  censure, 
and  write  a  petulant  complaint  to  the  reviewer  or  the  editor. 


§  13 

There  are,  or  used  to  be,  some  warm-hearted  persons  sitting  in  editorial 
chairs  who  believe  that  it  is  the  function  of  the  reviewer  always  to  say  some- 
thing pleasant  and  encouraging  to  every  author.  If  we  had  to  choose  be- 
tween this  method  and  the  merciless  flaying  which  used  to  delight  the 
writers  for  the  Quarterly  Review,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  humane 
method  is  best.  There  is  a  story  told,  —  it  is  my  impression  by  Laurence 
Hutton,  but  I  have  been  unable  to  find  the  exact  reference,  —  concerning 
William  Cullen  Bryant.  Mr.  Bryant  always  desired,  according  to  this  story, 
to  say  something  cordial  about  every  book,  no  matter  how  bad  it  might  be. 
He  gave  Mr.  Hutton  a  volume  of  poems  to  review,  and  told  him  it  was  ap- 
parently written  by  some  poor  woman  who  was  aspiring  to  be  a  poet.     "You 


48  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

can  find  something  good  in  it,"  he  said.  Mr.  Hutton  hunted  through  the 
book  and  brought  it  back  to  Mr.  Bryant,  challenging  him  to  find  one  line  in 
the  whole  volume  which  was  not  execrable.  Bryant  hunted,  and  had  to  admit 
that  no  good  word  could  be  spoken  for  it.  "But  perhaps,"  said  he,  "you  can 
praise  the  cover,"  and  he  turned  the  book  over  and  looked  at  the  cover.  "No," 
he  continued,  "it  is  an  affront  to  taste;  but  here,  the  cover  is  put  on  well;  you 
can  say  that."  And  so  the  book  notice  appeared,  giving  the  author's  name 
and  the  title  of  the  volume,  followed  by  the  single  comment,  "The  cover  is 
well  put  on." 

§  14 

Book  annotation  has  been  authoritatively  discussed  in  the  Library  Journal 
by  Mrs.  Fairchild  and  by  Mr.  George  lies.  The  annotations  which  it  is  urged 
should  be  put  on  the  catalogue  cards,  or  printed  under  the  entry  of  the  book 
in  a  library  bulletin,  furnish  an  important  and  interesting  subject  for  the 
librarian  to  investigate.  The  more  one  tries  to  write  satisfactory  annotations, 
to  boil  down  into  almost  the  space  of  a  telegram  the  contents  of  a  book,  the 
more  difficult  he  discovers  it  to  be.  In  controversial  subjects  it  is  useful  to 
say  in  the  annotation  which  side  of  the  controversy  the  author  takes,  provided 
he  is  a  partisan.  In  general,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  annotation  should  tend  to 
recommend  the  book  to  the  reader's  notice.  When  a  library  prints  the  title 
of  a  book  in  its  bulletin  it  means  that  the  library  stands  behind  that  book,  and 
that  it  is  worth  purchasing  and  listing.  Still  more  is  this  true  in  a  selected 
list,  for  here  the  library  is  choosing  certain  books  from  many  others  of  the 
same  class,  and  recommending  them  as  the  best  which  it  owns  or  can  obtain. 
Then  surely,  it  is  no  time  for  the  critical  note  which  bears  as  strongly  on  the 
weakness  as  upon  the  strength  of  the  book.  The  writer  of  a  book  annotation 
sometimes  forgets  that  he  is  not  to  display  his  ability  to  analyze,  but  rather 
to  indicate  the  book's  usefulness,  or  worth. 

Some  important  examples  of  annotation  occur  in  Baker's  "Guide  to 
the  Best  Fiction."  This  is  a  useful  and  admirable  book,  but  its  anno- 
tations are  sometimes  so  impartial  that  it  is  doubtful  if  anyone  would  realize 
that  the  compiler  really  intended  to  describe  these  books  as  worthy  of  at- 
tention. Take,  for  instance,  the  note  on  "Vanity  Fair."  Mr.  Baker  says 
that  "Vanity  Fair"  is  the  author's  "most  representative  novel  —  a  picture  of 
society  on  a  broad  canvas,  embracing  a  great  variety  of  characters  and  in- 
terests, the  object  being  to  depict  mankind  with  all  its  faults  and  meannesses 
without  idealization  or  romance.  There  is  little  set  design."  All  the  classes 
of  society  "are  portrayed  in  the  most  lifelike  way.    Episodes  strong  in  tragedy, 


BOOK-REVIEWS  '  .•;.::  49 

dramatic  displays  of  passion,  are  mingled  with  pure  comedy.  Thackeray 
combines  comment  with  narrative  even  more  intimately  than  Fielding.  To 
many  readers,  indeed,  his  sarcastic  dissertations  are  the  chief  intellectual  de- 
light. Lord  Steyne  is  drawn  from  the  Marquis  of  Hertford,  Mr.  Wagg  from 
Theodore  Hook,  and  Wenham  from  J.  W.  Croker."  Now,  this  annotation  is 
correct  in  all  essentials,  from  beginning  to  end.  It  could  only  have  been 
written  by  a  man  with  a  respectable  knowledge  of  Thackeray  and  generally  of 
the  English  novel.  It  shows  a  genuine  critical  quality;  yet  it  has  about  as 
much  enthusiasm  in  it,  about  as  much  warmth,  as  a  dead  fish.  No  one  would 
guess  from  it  that  the  book  under  discussion  was  what  many  judges  would 
name  as  the  highwater  mark  of  English  fiction.  I  certainly  cannot  imagine 
that  it  would  arouse  in  anyone  a  strong  desire  to  read  the  book.  Such  a 
note  is  not  necessarily  wrong  in  a  volume  like  Mr.  Baker's,  but  I  do  believe 
that  in  library  annotation  a  little  less  cool  analysis  and  a  little  more  enthusiasm 
is  desirable.  In  annotation,  as  in  book  reviewing,  maudlin  enthusiasm,  bub- 
bling sentimentality,  are  surely  to  be  avoided.  But  that  does  not  mean  that  we 
should  look  at  works,  which  after  all  are  designed  to  appeal  to  the  imagination 
and  the  emotions,  entirely  in  the  cold  light  of  the  intellect. 

§15 

In  spite  of  the  length  of  this  discussion,  it  is  not  my  theory  that  a  librarian 
should  read  reviews  without  ceasing.  There  are  other  methods  of  finding 
out  about  books.  First  and  foremost,  among  them,  is  reading  the  books 
themselves,  in  whole  or  in  part,  and  forming  our  own  opinions  about  them; 
opinions  which  we  should  sometimes  be  willing  to  maintain  in  opposition  to 
what  the  reviewers  may  say.  But  sometimes  the  reviews  are  of  no  avail, 
because  they  do  not  come  promptly.  Again,  it  may  not  be  necessary  to  have 
recourse  to  reviews  at  all.  No  librarian  would  wait,  when  Mr.  Howells 
published  a  book,  to  find  out  whether  the  book-reviewers  say  that  it  is  of 
a  sufficiently  high  literary  standard  to  warrant  its  admission  to  a  public 
library.  We  are  sure  about  that  in  advance.  Nor  have  we  any  reason  to 
feel  uneasiness  as  to  whether  its  ethical  tone  is  high  enough.  That  is  true 
of  such  a  writer  as  Mr.  Howells,  and  while  he  is  merely  one  example,  it  is 
also  true  of  writers  in  other  fields.  If  James  Bryce  publishes  a  book  on  gov- 
ernment, or  Professor  Gildersleeve  one  on  Greek,  we  know  that  we  have  to  do 
with  a  book  by  a  competent  writer,  and  for  the  most  part  the  questions  which 
arise  as  to  its  purchase  are  merely  financial.    We  buy  it  if  we  have  the  money. 

Librarians  use,  and  must  constantly  use,  a  number  of  facts  about  a  book: 
the  author's  reputation,  if  he  is  already  known,  the  publisher  (by  no  means 


50  THE  NEW  YORK  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

a  sure  guide  one  way  or  the  other,  but  always  to  be  considered),  and  the 
general  circumstances  attending  the  publication  of  the  book,  —  even  its  physi- 
cal appearance.  Librarians  must  often  use  these  clues,  and  make  their  de- 
cisions without  consulting  any  review  at  all. 


§  16 

It  may  be  that  I  have  quoted  or  said  some  things  which  will  lead  you 
to  read  or  investigate  a  little  in  this  by-path  of  literature  or  journalism.  If 
you  should  examine  Mr.  Brimley  Johnston's  "Famous  Reviews,"  or  if  you 
can  go  back  to  some  of  the  old  reviews  themselves,  I  believe  that  you  will  find 
the  experience  enjoyable.  It  is  important  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  critics, 
even  the  most  learned  and  distinguished,  have  been  wrong  over  and  over 
again  in  their  judgments  of  contemporary  literature;  have  applauded  writers 
of  no  importance,  and  violently  condemned  or  ridiculed  men  whose  works  are 
now  the  chief  glories  of  our  literature.  To  say  this,  however,  ought  not  leave 
a  feeling  of  scorn  for  book-reviewing  and  literary  criticism.  To  correct  such 
an  impression  it  is  only  necessary  to  look  at  one  of  the  half  dozen  best  reviews 
in  English  to  see  the  number  of  sensible  and  useful  book  notices  which  are 
appearing  all  the  time. 

I  should  like  to  emphasize  what  I  believe  to  be  the  fact:  — that  long 
reviews  of  books  other  than  fiction  are  usually  of  more  importance,  and  that 
the  shorter  reviews  of  books  of  imaginative  literature,  while  often  interest- 
ing and  sometimes  valuable,  may  nevertheless  be  merely  expressions  of  per- 
sonal opinion  on  a  subject  about  which  people  differ  as  much  as  they  do  in 
their  taste  in  food.  There  are  writers,  like  Meredith,  about  whom  critics 
differ  sharply.  To  a  man  who  does  not  like  parsnips  there  is  no  use  arguing 
that  parsnips  are  good.  One  writer  of  book-reviews  enjoys  Conrad's  novels 
and  another  cannot  read  them.  The  latter  might  have  condemned  his  earlier 
books  as  unreadable.  Now,  if  he  were  competent,  he  would  have  in  mind  the 
esteem  in  which  thousands  of  discriminating  readers  hold  Joseph  Conrad,  and 
have  respect  for  their  opinions.  But  here  he  could  not,  if  he  were  honest, 
deal  fairly.  Perhaps  he  ought  to  decline  to  review  Conrad's  books  and  let 
them  be  passed  upon  by  a  sympathetic  critic. 

Reading  reviews  is  one  of  a  librarian's  duties,  and  also  one  of  a  librarian's 
pleasures.  In  this  it  resembles  reading  of  books  and  of  everything  else.  "A 
librarian  who  reads  is  lost,"  —  that  is  one  of  the  bland  falsehoods  about  our 
work.  A  librarian  who  does  not  read  is  hardly  worth  losing,  and,  moreover, 
must  have  very  poor  fun. 


JUL  i   ?  195^ 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

iilBRARy  SCHOOL  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 

(/' 

OCT  2  5  1964 

, 

General  Library 
LD  21-50m-8,'57                                  University  of  California 

(C8481sl0)476                                                   Berkeley 

^ 


